They Don't Really Care About Us

Black and brown people are being murdered by police officers at an alarming rate, and nothing is being done about it.     

How much of a difference do principals make? An analysis of between-schools variation in academic achievement in Hong Kong public secondary schools

This article aims to explain the role principals play in the variation in academic achievement between secondary schools in Hong Kong. The article draws on survey data from 179 key staff and 2,037 students from 42 schools. The study uses 2 analytical approaches. First, it employs classification and regression tree analysis (CART). This was used to sort out the most significant leadership practices associated with student achievement. Second, based on first-stage analysis, the study further explores the effects of leadership practices on academic achievement using hierarchical linear modelling (HLM). Results indicate that transparent and efficient communication structures as managed by principals explained approximately 12% of between-schools variation in academic achievement. Leadership practices related to quality assurance and accountability and resource management also contributed to explaining between-schools variation in academic achievement, yet they had negative effects on student achievement. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Scientific thought as dogmatism

In science, positivism has had a major impact on how we see the world. It has resulted in the belief that there is only one true answer to a question, all answers are knowable, and that those answers may be combined into a single coherent theory. The authors argue that positivistic thought has mischaracterized the dialectical process and that positivism results in dogmatic thought. The suggestion is made that a more appropriate way of understanding the development of thought is to interpret the activity of knowing as a series of syntheses rather than dramatic resolutions.     

The Development of a Benchmarking Methodology to Assist in Managing the Enhancement of University Research Quality

The paper proposes a metric, the research quality index (RQI), for assessing and tracking university research quality. The RQI is a composite index that encompasses the three main areas of research activity: publications, research grants and higher degree by research activity. The public availability of such an index will also facilitate benchmarking (internally, competitively and generically) by academic units in universities. This has become an important activity in Australia with the proposed introduction of the Research Quality Framework (RQF) as the future research funding mechanism for Australian universities. The RQF is a quality-based system that will replace the existing funding system that is focused on the volume of research output, not quality. Benchmarking, using the RQI, will allow academic units to track their progress towards their quality targets and facilitates internal and competitive benchmarking, allowing academic units to assess the efficacy of their research quality enhancement strategies and policies on an annual basis. The paper illustrates the compilation and operation of the RQI. The RQI is a short-term tracking methodology for use in between the cyclical major research quality assessments. With modifications, it is applicable in a wide range of countries.     

False Uniqueness: the Self‐Perception of New Entrants to Higher Education in the UK and Its Implications for Access – a Pilot Study1

A central tenet of contemporary education policy relates to the desire to extend higher education (HE) provision to less advantaged groups (‘widening participation’). Our paper contends that a key behavioural obstacle to widening participation lies in the erroneous belief that persists among potential entrants from disadvantaged backgrounds as to their capabilities of succeeding within the HE environment – a perception that serves to deflate application/recruitment rates from such groupings. We test this ‘false uniqueness’ thesis using a sample of 127 new UK undergraduates, finding that students drawn from lower social class backgrounds consistently underestimated their abilities vis‐à‐vis the overall cohort.