A Criterion-Referenced Approach to Student Ratings of Instruction

We developed a criterion-referenced student rating of instruction (SRI) to facilitate formative assessment of teaching. It involves four dimensions of teaching quality that are grounded in current instructional design principles: Organization and structure, Assessment and feedback, Personal interactions, and Academic rigor. Using item response theory and Wright mapping methods, we describe teaching characteristics at various points along the latent continuum for each scale. These maps enable criterion-referenced score interpretation by making an explicit connection between test performance and the theoretical framework. We explain the way our Wright maps can be used to enhance an instructor’s ability to interpret scores and identify ways to refine teaching. Although our work is aimed at improving score interpretation, a criterion-referenced test is not immune to factors that may bias test scores. The literature on SRIs is filled with research on factors unrelated to teaching that may bias scores. Therefore, we also used multilevel models to evaluate the extent to which student and course characteristic may affect scores and compromise score interpretation. Results indicated that student anger and the interaction between student gender and instructor gender are significant effects that account for a small amount of variance in SRI scores. All things considered, our criterion-referenced approach to SRIs is a viable way to describe teaching quality and help instructors refine pedagogy and facilitate course development.     

Innovation in regions: What does really matter?

The literature on systems of innovation conceptualises innovation as an evolutionary and social process of collective learning. But three main questions remain open: is this learning process rather internal or external? What are the boundaries of this process? Is this social process voluntary or rather unintended? This paper strives to tackle those questions by analysing the determinants of regional innovative levels in French manufacturing industries. By estimating a knowledge production function we find that building external interactions is of greater importance than developing internal innovative competences. Second, unintended knowledge flows have less influence on regional innovative performance than deliberate ones. Lastly, the French innovation system looks regional rather than sectoral.     

Educational Research: A Reply to Professor Pring

Professor Richard Pring's BJES Vol. 48, No. 1 editorial shares a widespread unease regarding government centralisation of state-funded research (not only on education). Unfortunately the editorial compromises with this trend by suggesting it is obvious to academic experts where research should be so concentrated. Instead, an alternative model of research is advocated to counter so far as is possible the tendency towards centralisation.     

The Principalship in Transition

Many individuals enter administration not fully prepared for their roles. This is because many preparatory programs have persistent weaknesses in the linkage between theory and practice, are irrelevant and grossly inadequate for the current responsibilities of the principalship, and overlook teaching the social realities of administrative roles. Along with aligning administrative programs with standards of effective leadership, the social side of administration must be considered and addressed.     

Distance education for the gifted and talented: An interactive design model

In 1994, the New South Wales Board of Studies, Australia, introduced three high level Distinction Courses for gifted and talented students: comparative literature, cosmology, and philosophy. All are offered by distance education but the cosmology course employs an interactive design model and an extensive communication system that differentiates it from the other two. This article explains the model and the way it is used in practice to organize, sequence and deliver the course. Discussion addresses ways in which the model might be used to design a wider range of courses for gifted and talented students.     

“Emerging” organized crime hypotheses in criminology textbooks: The case of African-American organized crime

Contemporary textbooks exhibit competing historical perspectives regarding so-called “emerging” organized crime groups. Some texts argue that organized crime committed by groups other than Sicilian/Italian-Americans is now emerging. Others hold that many of the “emerging” groups have been organizing crime for some time and that it is the research in this area that is emerging. This paper briefly examines these propositions, presenting the two groups of thought regarding African-American organized crime. The author then presents a literature review of African-American organized crime research to assist scholars and instructors attempting to better understand the competing perspectives.