Beyond internationalisation and isomorphism – the construction of a global higher education regime

ABSTRACT

National higher education systems are undergoing profound changes, discussed in many but unrelated studies as outcomes of internationalisation dynamics and institutional isomorphism pressures. We propose to link these studies by emphasising the influence of both internationalisation and isomorphism on the formation of a global educational regime. Through a broad range of indicators, we describe the growth of the discursive, normative, and regulatory dimensions of such a global higher education regime. We find evidence of the following developments: (1) a rapidly growing network of international organisations focused on conferences, initiatives, and programmes supporting a global higher education agenda; (2) a striking increase in the number of international and national accreditation agencies, their mutual cross-national recognition as well as the number of universities that are nationally and internationally accredited; and lastly, (3) parallel increases in regional qualification frameworks and in the implementation of national qualification frameworks. These developments create integration pressures manifest in the mutual recognition of higher education degrees, for which a new generation of regional conventions has emerged worldwide in the past two decades. We discuss these processes and their implications for understanding ‘national’ higher education as well as the threats and limits to the burgeoning higher education regime.     

Resources, capabilities, risk capital and the creation of university spin-out companies

The commercialization of university research has become an increasingly important issue, given concerns regarding licensing and the university's desire to maximize the returns to intellectual property (IP). In this paper, we assess the impact of university resources and routines/capabilities on the creation of spin-out companies. We find that both the number of spin-out companies created and the number of spin-out companies created with equity investment are significantly positively associated with expenditure on intellectual property protection, the business development capabilities of technology transfer offices and the royalty regime of the university. These results highlight the importance not just of resource stocks, but also of developing appropriate capabilities of technology transfer officers in spinning-out companies. The results suggest that universities and policy-makers need to devote attention to the training and recruitment of technology officers with the broad base of commercial skills.     

移动技术支持的学习新进展

整个世界似乎都在移动,电话、电脑以及媒体设备是如此地轻便和便携.通过这些技术,不仅可以获取丰富的信息资源,而且还可以使沟通无处不在.我们对如何发挥这些技术的教育价值给予了极大关注.在本综述中,主要考虑个人便携技术,重点关注包括PDA和手机等手持设备.本研究采用以活动为中心的视角来审视移动技术的教育应用,重点论述与这些活动相关的学习范式、理论;通过对文献中的案例进行分析阐明教学实践的分类;考虑了对政策及教育实践的含义;最后,基于目前移动技术支持的学习研究的新进展,我们对移动技术支持的学习的未来进行了展望,并探究其对教育者和技术开发者的启示.     

Book editors in the social sciences and humanities: an analysis of publication and collaboration patterns of established researchers in Flanders

Book editors in the social sciences and humanities play an important role in their fields but little is known about their typical publication and collaboration patterns. To partially fill this gap, we compare Flemish editors and other researchers, in terms of career stage, productivity, publication types, publications with domestic and international collaboration as well as the number of (international or all) unique co‐authors, co‐editors and associated book chapter authors. The results show that editors are mostly established researchers, especially in the social sciences, produce more book chapters and monographs than do other researchers, and are more productive. Nevertheless, editors collaborate less than do other researchers, both in terms of publications and in number of co‐authors. Including book chapter authors in the editors' collaboration networks makes those networks substantially larger, demonstrating that editors do not mainly call upon authors from their existing collaboration network when choosing book chapter authors in the edited books. Finally, editors seem to co‐author with their book chapter authors slightly more often after the publication of the edited book than before.     

Evidence-based practice: the use and abuse of research

The authors of this position paper argue that there is currently very little evidence-based practice in relation to learners with severe learning disabilities (SLD) and profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD), and that which there is, has often been badly used and/or abused. More specifically, we argue that relevant educational research undertaken so far has a strong tendency towards: (i) conflating the need for common strategies to be universally used in teaching, with the ‘need’ for a common curriculum; (ii) quoting research that applies to children with certain types of SEND as though it applies to all children with SEND; (iii) assuming there is a homogeneity of learning disability among people with the same condition (for example Down's syndrome, autism) and (iv) encouraging assumptions that any academic progress, no matter how small the gain, is axiomatically superior in value for all pupils. The authors conclude that there is need for a new look at ‘evidence-based practice’ for these populations.     

A framework for monitoring instructional environments in a virtual world

Virtual worlds are gaining momentum as a platform for delivering simulation‐based educational experiences to students. However, a key aspect of virtual world‐based education that has received little attention is recording and analyzing students' in‐world actions. This capability is essential for assessing what students have learned through their simulation experience, and engaging the students in post‐simulation reflective learning. In this research, we present a framework for recording and analyzing students' actions in a virtual world. This framework is based upon pedagogical theories of exploratory and experiential learning, and is defined in a virtual‐world agnostic manner. The framework consists of two parts: (1) the Avatar Capabilities Model, which defines the educationally relevant actions that a student can take within a virtual world and (2) the Simulation Capture and Analysis toolkit that records and analyzes these actions, from an educational perspective. These analyses provide instructors with systematically collected evidence of the students' actions during their virtual world experience. This alleviates the need for instructors to directly observe students, thereby allowing for the scaling‐up of virtual worlds use in education. We have demonstrated the usefulness of the tool via a pilot study, with two students, in an emergency medical education context.     

Using a Table of Specifications to improve teacher-constructed traditional tests: an experimental design

We investigated if instruction on a Table of Specifications (TOS) would influence the quality of classroom test construction. Results should prove informative for educational researchers, teacher educators, and practising teachers interested in evidenced-based strategies that may improve assessment-related practices. Fifty-three college undergraduates were randomly assigned to an experimental (exposed to the TOS strategy) and a comparison condition (no specific strategy support) and given materials for an instructional unit to use to construct a classroom test. Results of a multivariate analysis of covariance suggested that students exposed to the TOS strategy constructed a test with higher test content evidence but not response process evidence scores. Furthermore, we found that treatment participants were able to accurately complete the TOS tool and choose items that reflected the subject matter specified in the TOS tool. However, they experienced difficulty selecting items at the cognitive level specified in the TOS tool.     

Determining the Overall Impact of Interruptions During Online Testing

With an increase in the number of online tests, interruptions during testing due to unexpected technical issues seem unavoidable. For example, interruptions occurred during several recent state tests. When interruptions occur, it is important to determine the extent of their impact on the examinees’ scores. There is a lack of research on this topic due to the novelty of the problem. This article is an attempt to fill that void. Several methods, primarily based on propensity score matching, linear regression, and item response theory, were suggested to determine the overall impact of the interruptions on the examinees’ scores. A realistic simulation study shows that the suggested methods have satisfactory Type I error rate and power. Then the methods were applied to data from the Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress‐Plus (ISTEP+) test that experienced interruptions in 2013. The results indicate that the interruptions did not have a significant overall impact on the student scores for the ISTEP+ test.