Framing the socialisation process of the DBA candidate: what can universities offer and what should candidates bring?

In Australia, the Doctorate of Business Administration (DBA) remains a popular program but considerable anguish persists within the university sector over just what it is offering students. In this article, we use the process of postgraduate socialisation to understand how candidates, supervisors and administrators navigate pathways to successful completion and offering of a DBA program. We identify four modes of knowledge applicable to the DBA and suggest that universities and candidates may draw on one another's cultural capital to determine which mode(s) can be offered. We also illustrate how candidates exercise agency through their cultural and social capital as they move through the program. We present a conceptual framework to help guide future research, and resource allocation on the DBA.     

Towards creating an inclusive community of researchers: the first three years of the North American Association for Environmental Education research symposium

This article uses a series of interlinked, personal vignettes to discuss the first three years of the North American Association for Environmental Education research symposium, from the perspectives of the key organizers. Seven challenges in the field of environmental education research are identified in a recent historical context, and we illustrate how the symposium sought to address them. The challenges were, that: (i) environmental education research has been marginalized in some areas and not recognized in others; (ii) environmental education research and environmental education practice need to be brought closer together; (iii) environmental education research is still in early development of a professional perspective; (iv) environmental education research has to give a voice to early career scholars and graduate students; (v) environmental education research needs to enable discourse about both process and outcomes; (vi) environmental education researchers need social learning contexts to help develop professional identities and create more meaningful dialogue to address these challenges; and (vii) methodologies, theoretical frameworks and differences in beliefs in environmental education research need to be accommodated. The last challenge is seen as the most significant with which to continue to engage, in developing open, inclusive forums for researchers of environmental education.     

Adolescents’ definitions of bullying: the contribution of age,gender, and experience of bullying

The aim of the present research was to examine adolescents’ definitions of bullying in a nationally representative sample of adolescents in Ireland. Definitions of bullying were examined according to age, gender, and bullying experiences. A sample of 4358 adolescents aged 12–19 years (M?=?14.99 years, SD?=?1.63) provided their definitions of bullying as part of the My World Survey-Second Level. The definitions were explored using content analysis. Adolescents differed in terms of their definition of bullying, with younger students frequently describing the nature of bullying as mean, while older students displayed a heightened awareness of the feelings associated with being a victim of bullying. Older females and those who had experienced bullying were more likely to discuss the emotions associated with bullying compared to males and those who had not been bullied. Adolescent definitions of bullying were not in line with widely accepted researcher definitions. Recommendations are made for researchers and those designing anti-bullying interventions and educational programmes.     

Electrochemical power sources

The pressing need to alleviate our urban airquality has provided the impetus for electric vehicles. Over the years, a great deal of research and development work has been carried out, and is still underway, on all aspects of electric vehicles especially on improving the power sources, namely the re-chargeable batteries, fuel cells and electrochemical supercapacitors. The developments in rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles are reflected in this part of the article while fuel cells and electrochemical supercapacitors will be described in Part 2 of the article.     

Collaborative Problem Solving in Five‐Year‐Old Children: Evidence of social facilitation and social loafing

Children’s problem solving while working by themselves or with a partner was investigated to explore whether young children are susceptible to social facilitation and social loafing. Five‐year‐olds were asked to complete easy or hard puzzles, either alone or with a partner. Half of the children were given instructions indicating that their performance would be evaluated and the other half were not. Children showed social facilitation, in that they performed better with a partner than when working alone under evaluation conditions, with the easy puzzle. Children also showed social loafing, in that performance with a partner was poorer when working under no evaluation than evaluation conditions, with the easy puzzle. Performance with the hard puzzle did not differ whether children worked alone or with a partner, but children working on the hard puzzle under no evaluation conditions performed better than those working under evaluation conditions. The findings suggest that evaluation affects children’s performance in group settings in different ways depending on task difficulty.     

Sport experiences of Division I collegiate athletes and their perceptions of the importance of specialization

The purpose of the current study was to investigate Division I athletes’ prior sport participation and athletes’ perceptions regarding sport specialization. Athletes (N = 1041) completed self-report surveys and indicated that participation in their collegiate sport began around nine years of age (M = 9.10, SD = 3.83). Athletes played a large number of sports in elementary and middle school with participation decreasing during high school. For those athletes who specialized in one sport, specialization occurred typically at 12.5 years of age. In addition, athletes past sport background and perceptions of specialization differed depending on their college sport with some sports (i.e., gymnastics) starting participation and specializing earlier than others (i.e., football, cross country, and track and field). Interestingly, no differences existed in past sport experiences or perceptions of specialization dependent on scholarship status or expected playing status. This study supports prior research that early specialization is not a requirement for elite level performance.     

The Relation Between Information-Processing Variables and Test-Retest Stability for Questionnaire Items

Recently developed cognitive theories explain why some questionnaire items can be answered in a reliable and valid manner and others cannot. Those theories distinguish two components: (a) the interpretation or understanding of a question and (b) the role of memory. The present study investigates the ability of these two components to forecast the test-retest association coefficients of 207 pilot questionnaire items used in an international study of reading literacy in which 2 populations were involved: Grade 5 and Grade 2 of primary and secondary education, respectively. The analysis of the data showed that for both populations, both components forecast the relative sizes of the test-retest correlation coefficients. The results strongly suggest that if one wishes to use questionnaire items in research about relationships, then the items should be as unambiguous as possible. Moreover, the information needed to formulate an answer must be easily accessible in the respondent's memory.     

Recognition of phoneme invariance by beginning readers

This paper reports an experimental study of a possible confound in measures of young children's phoneme awareness — that of global similarity between words. We developed two otherwise identical versions of a test of phoneme invariance (typical item, ‘which starts the same asbeak, bowl orshed?’), one version controlling for global similarity and the other not. We administered both tests to 27 kindergarten children, along with three criterion measures of early literacy skill. Three converging results supported the importance of controlling for global similarity when attempting to measure phoneme invariance: (1) the subjects attained higher scores on the uncontrolled version, and half of those passing this version (11/22), were ‘false positives’ in that they did not pass the controlled version, (2) a metric of global similarity was significantly related to the proportion of children passing an item on both versions, and (3) there was a stronger relation between the controlled version and the criterion literacy measures of spelling and decoding than was found for the uncontrolled version. The educational implications of the results are discussed.