Strategic planning by academic institutions — following the corporate path?

This article compares the findings from two surveys of strategic planning practices in Australia: those of academic institutions and those of manufacturing corporations. The similarities and differences are identified and in broad terms explained by the stage of evolution of strategic planning that has been reached by academic institutions when compared to corporations. Given the recent questioning of the value of strategic planning by corporations, the validity of academic institutions continuing on this path is questioned with the conclusion that the planning process per se is desirable.     

Constructing a synthetic‐analytic framework for precocious writing

Conceptual models of giftedness that cannot explain the full spectrum of depicted behaviors are incomplete. The same is true for frameworks that purport to analyze those behaviors. Within giftedness, extraordinary and rare talents afford us the opportunity to extend and modify models and frameworks. This article presents an analysis of the first 2 years of writing of a precocious child whose prolific language, complex sentence structures, and sophisticated conceptual development belie his age. Attempts to conduct comparative analyses found that existing frameworks could not explain the data's holistic and thematic tones. This led to the construction of a new synthetic‐analytic framework for precocious writing that more fully depicts the known spectrum of writing elements exhibited by highly gifted children.     

Review and redesign of the curriculum of a Masters programme in telecommunications engineering – Towards an outcome-based approach

This article presents the methodology and results of the curriculum review of the Masters of Science programme in Wireless Communications offered by the Telecommunications Engineering Department at Yarmouk University in Jordan. The review is based on expert opinion collected through questionnaires and meetings about the programme and focuses on two main aspects: the first is relevance of the programme to the needs of local and regional telecommunications industry and the second is comparability to similar programmes in the EU.

Through an extensive analysis of the collected data, a set of recommendations for improvement of the existing curriculum was developed. These recommendations were then used to redesign the curriculum with regard to contents, teaching methodology and assessment.     

Neuroscience and education: how best to filter out the neurononsense from our classrooms?

This article considers the extent to which neuroscience is being applied to education, both on a classroom level and also on the level of curricular reform in Northern Ireland. The article reviews recent research in the area of neuroscience and education and examines a number of popular ‘neuromyths’. It urges the educational world to take a more informed, cautious and critical approach to neuroscience in education, not least in terms of the Northern Ireland Revised Curriculum, and also makes a plea to the neuro scientific community to police in a more rigorous way the application and misapplication of research findings in schools.     

Examining the legacy of the Warnock Report in Northern Ireland: A Foucauldian genealogical approach

Over 40 years after the publication of the Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Education of Handicapped Children and Young People, commonly referred to as the Warnock Report, this article uniquely considers its legacy in the context of Northern Ireland. The article adopts a Foucauldian genealogical approach to consider first the specific context of the ‘emergence’ or ‘origins’ of the Warnock Report in the 1970s, highlighting competing political forces and the positioning of the report at the very end of the age of post-war welfarism. The approach details the key elements of the Warnock Report itself, and then charts the resulting development of SEN policy in Northern Ireland, culminating in the faltering process of reform which began in 2006 and has been partially completed but which has recently been halted by the collapse of the power-sharing Executive and the suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly in January 2017. The legacy of the Warnock Report is critically examined, identifying the main positive contributions of the report but also acknowledging the enduring challenges set against a complex current financial and political context. Finally, rather than leaving Warnock completely behind, a case is made for a fresh, detailed, context-specific reading of this seminal report.     

Implications of task structure on self‐regulated learning and achievement

School tasks interact with student motivation, cognition, and instruction to influence learning and achievement. Heeding calls for additional research linking motivational and cognitive factors in learning and instruction on specific tasks within authentic classroom settings we quantitatively and qualitatively track 90 tenth‐grade science students’ motivation, reported use of learning strategies, achievement, calibration, and task perceptions as they engage in a well‐structured task (WST) and an ill‐structured task (IST). Students achieved higher grades on, and reported more ease and value for, the WST whereas they utilised critical thinking and peer learning strategies more on the IST. Lower academic achievers calibrated their achievement less accurately on each task and experienced lower grades, interest, ease, and management capability on the IST. Conversely, higher academic achieving students reported more self‐efficacy and effort regulation and lower anxiety and elaboration on the IST. Motivation – notably less intrinsic goal orientation in low academic achievers and higher task value and self‐efficacy – predicted performance on the IST. The structure of tasks may provide prompts that illicit unique self‐regulated learning responses in students.     

Do Journal Administrators solve the reviewer assignment problem as well as editors? Consideration of reviewer rigour and timeliness

The study aimed to find whether journal editorial office administrators were as effective as editors at assigning rigorous reviewers. We analysed four journals using blended systems of editor‐selected reviewers (ESR) and Journal Administrator‐selected reviewers (JASR) from four disciplines: medicine, sociology, education, and business/applied psychology. In blended journals, both editors and Journal Administrators select authors to review using web‐based expert‐finding tools. All reviewers selected were both authors and reviewers. We primarily wanted to assess the quality of reviews from both ESR and JASR reviewer selection methodologies. Reviewer rigour was defined as differences between editor decisions and reviewer recommendations. Timeliness data were also recorded and analysed separately as an indicator of efficiency. Reviewer rigour, the quality of reviewers’ evaluations, was estimated from the level of agreement between editors and reviewers. Timeliness was not considered a direct measure of rigour. For two journals, no statistically significant differences were observed; for two, in a small proportion of cases, ESR reviews were more negative. One journal showed some statistically significant major differences but only in 2% of reviews. Timeliness data indicated some statistically significant trends that JASR return reviews more promptly. Therefore, where editors rely on at least two reviewers’ recommendations, JASR is equally rigorous as ESR.     

A Masters Programme in telecommunications management – demand-based curriculum design

This paper presents a curriculum design approach for a Masters Programme in Telecommunications Management based on demand data obtained from surveying the needs of potential students of the proposed programme. Through online surveys disseminated at telecom companies in Jordan, it was possible to measure the demand for such a programme and to determine the required programme contents and specifications. The curriculum design is based on definition of programme outcomes and on using a house of quality approach (HOQ) to determine the list of courses required in the programme. Surveyed competencies are mapped to a long list of proposed courses in a HOQ in order to determine the importance of each of these courses. A final list of core and elective courses is then developed considering the contribution to programme outcomes and the academic standards.