PSYCHOLOGICAL ACCULTURATION: DEVELOPMENT OF A NEW MEASURE FOR PUERTO RICANS ON THE U.S. MAINLAND

Most instruments designed to measure acculturation have relied on specific cultural behaviors and preferences as primary indicators of acculturation. In contrast, feelings of belonging and emotional attachment to cultural communities have not been widely used. The Psychological Acculturation Scale (PAS) was developed to assess acculturation from a phenomenological perspective, with items pertaining to the individual's sense of psychological attachment to and belonging within the Anglo-American and Latino/Hispanic cultures. Responses from samples of bilingual individuals and Puerto Rican adolescents and adults are used to establish a high degree of measurement equivalence across the Spanish and English versions of the scale along with high levels of internal consistency and construct validity. The usefulness of the PAS and the importance of studying acculturation from a phenomenological perspective are discussed.     

Conceptualising Curriculum Change

Recent developments in UK higher education are turning attention to the undergraduate curriculum. Drawing on Lyotard's concept of performativity, this paper explores broad patterns of curriculum change in five subject areas. The curriculum is understood as an educational project forming identities founded in three domains: knowledge, action and self. Curriculum models are proposed that identify these components and their relationships with each other. The evidence suggests that the weightings and levels of integration of these components vary between the sciences and technology subjects, the arts and humanities, and professional courses. Attempts to develop curriculum strategies should take account of the patterns of curriculum components as they vary between the subject areas.     

Revisiting print exposure: exploring differential links to vocabulary,comprehension and reading rate

Undergraduates (N=171) completed a revised version of the Author Recognition Test ( Stanovich & West, 1989 ). The resulting print exposure scores were divided into two dimensions: personal reading experience (primary print knowledge – PPK) and secondary print knowledge (SPK). Both PPK and SPK were correlated with print exposure, but not with each other. PPK correlated more strongly with reading‐related variables (vocabulary, comprehension and reading rate) than did SPK. Of particular importance, PPK accounted for variance in all three criterion variables after the effects of SPK had been factored out. Thus, these data support the notion that it is the act of reading over and above memory for reading‐related information that furthers the development of linguistic skill.     

Education research and policy making in higher education: the case of Dearing

In establishing a National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education in the United Kingdom (the Dearing Committee), the Government expected short-term problems and long-term developments to be examined in less than half the average time taken by previous inquiries. Conscious of the intellectual authority of its predecessor, the Robbins Committee, the Dearing inquiry commissioned a large number of research and analytical studies to inform its deliberations. The ways that research and other forms of evidence were collected and considered by the inquiry are discussed in relation to four themes: the context and conditions for the inquiry; the nature of the work commissioned; the treatment of public evidence and the use of research to inform key recommendations; and what the episode disclosed about the relationship between education research and policy-making in higher education. In the course of this commentary, it is suggested that the uneven engagement with research and academic literatures in the Dearing inquiry was not simply a function of its terms and conditions of existence, but reflected more general features of the contemporary research base and policy environment in higher education.     

Rhodes Boyson: a Janus of education?

ABSTRACT

This article examines the career of the educationalist, Conservative politician and published writer on education and politics, Rhodes Boyson (1925–2012). As an educationalist, Boyson established Highbury Grove Boys’ Comprehensive School in Islington, North London: an inner-city school which was antithetical to the wave of progressivism in the 1960s and early 1970s. The article explores Boyson’s educational approach and vision in greater depth than has been the case in previous publications about him and attempts to place him beyond the limitations of a caricature and offer some redemption, seeing him as a paradox: he was welded to educational traditions but at the same time had a vision which can be seen as forward-thinking. This duality, and the sense of Rhodes Boyson as a paradox, makes the Janus metaphor apposite.