Balancing trust and control through dialogue meetings in Norwegian school district governance

Increased attention has been paid to school superintendents and their role in school reforms. Still, there are few studies on dialogue meetings between actors at different levels in the school hierarchy. The current paper investigates how a superintendent balances between trust and control while supporting school development through dialogue meetings. Drawing on interviews, reflection notes, and longitudinal observational data from dialogue meetings, comprising a superintendent, subordinated school leaders, and team leaders, this action research study provides insight into requirements for productive dialogue meetings. We argue that superintendent leadership through regular dialogue meetings can foster trust-building, empowerment, and professional commitment.

     

Anatomy as the backbone of an integrated first year medical curriculum: design and implementation

Morehouse School of Medicine chose to restructure its first year medical curriculum in 2005. The anatomy faculty had prior experience in integrating courses, stemming from the successful integration of individual anatomical sciences courses into a single course called Human Morphology. The integration process was expanded to include the other first year basic science courses (Biochemistry, Physiology, and Neurobiology) as we progressed toward an integrated curriculum. A team, consisting of the course directors, a curriculum coordinator, and the Associate Dean for Educational and Faculty Affairs, was assembled to build the new curriculum. For the initial phase, the original course titles were retained but the lecture order was reorganized around the Human Morphology topic sequence. The material from all four courses was organized into four sequential units. Other curricular changes included placing laboratories and lectures more consistently in the daily routine, reducing lecture time from 120 to 90 minute blocks, eliminating unnecessary duplication of content, and increasing the amount of independent study time. Examinations were constructed to include questions from all courses on a single test, reducing the number of examination days in each block from three to one. The entire restructuring process took two years to complete, and the revised curriculum was implemented for the students entering in 2007. The outcomes of the restructured curriculum include a reduction in the number of contact hours by 28%, higher or equivalent subject examination average scores, enhanced student satisfaction, and a first year curriculum team better prepared to move forward with future integration.     

Why do All the Study Abroad Students Look Alike? Applying an Integrated Student Choice Model to Explore Differences in the Factors that Influence White and Minority Students’ Intent to Study Abroad

Despite substantial efforts across postsecondary education to increase minority participation in study abroad, the homogeneity of study abroad participants remains largely unchanged (Dessoff in Int Educ 15(2):20–27, 2006; Shih in , 2009). This study applies an adaptation of an integrated student choice model (Perna in Higher education: Handbook of theory and research, 2006; Salisbury et al. in Research in Higher Education 50:119–143, 2009) to identify differences between white and minority (African-American, Hispanic, and Asian-American) students across measures of human, financial, social, and cultural capital previously shown to influence aspirations to study abroad (Salisbury et al.). Analysis of data from 6,828 students at 53 institutions participating in the Wabash National Study on Liberal Arts Education suggests numerous differences between racial groups with considerable implications for institutions, scholars, and policymakers.     

Implementation and modification of an anatomy‐based integrated curriculum

Morehouse School of Medicine elected to restructure its first‐year medical curriculum by transitioning from a discipline‐based to an integrated program. The anatomy course, with regional dissection at its core, served as the backbone for this integration by weaving the content from prior traditional courses into the curriculum around the anatomy topics. There were four primary goals for this restructuring process. Goal 1: develop new integrated courses. Course boundaries were established at locations where logical breaks in anatomy content occurred. Four new courses were created, each containing integrated subject content. Goal 2: establish a curriculum management team. The team consisted of course directors, subject specialists, and a curriculum director. This team worked together to efficiently manage the new curriculum. Goal 3: launch contemporary examination and question banking methods. An electronic system, in which images could be included, was implemented for examinations and quizzes, and for storing and refining questions. Goal 4: ensure equitable distribution of standardized examinations and course grading systems among all courses. Assessments included quizzes, in‐course examinations, and National Board of Medical Examiners^® (NBME^®) Subject Examinations. A standard plan assigned the contribution of each to the final course grade. Significant improvement was seen on subject examinations. Once the obstacles and challenges of integration were overcome, a robust and efficient education program was developed. The curriculum is expected to continue evolving and improving, while retaining full regional dissection as a core element. Anat Sci Educ 10: 262–275. © 2016 American Association of Anatomists.     

Going Global: Understanding the Choice Process of the Intent to Study Abroad

This study applies an integrated model of college choice to better describe students who do and do not intend to study abroad. Although internationalization through study abroad is widely touted as a preferred means of developing globally competent college graduates, very little is known about the factors that influence students’ predisposition to study abroad. This research explores the impact of financial, human, social, and cultural capital on students’ intent to study abroad. Analysis of data from the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education (WNSLAE) demonstrates a complex interplay between SES, accumulated pre-college capital, and capital acquired during the freshman year. Important implications for national policy makers, senior administrators, study abroad professionals and higher education researchers are discussed.     

Preferred social organization of learning formats among pupils experiencing different kinds of internalizing problems in secondary school

The aims of this study were to investigate the dimensionality of internalizing problems among secondary high school pupils and to find out about their preferences for the social organization of learning formats. We wanted to see if preferences varied for pupils reporting different kinds of internalizing problems. Five hundred and one pupils in Grades 8, 9 and 10 (aged 13–16 years) from two secondary schools in a city in the south of Norway participated in the study. The results indicate that internalizing problems can be sub‐divided into symptoms of depression, symptoms of anxiety and social passive behaviour. We found a high association between symptoms of depression and symptoms of anxiety. However, scores for social passivity showed relatively low associations with symptoms of anxiety and depression. Our results indicated that all pupils with internalizing difficulties had lower than average negative preferences for most of the learning formats. Our results also suggest that depressed pupils have a particularly low preference for individual work, whereas socially passive pupils are most negative about whole class interactions.     

THE CONDITIONAL AND INTERACTION EFFECTS OF EPISTEMOLOGICAL BELIEFS ON THE SELF-REGULATED LEARNING OF COLLEGE STUDENTS: Cognitive and Behavioral Strategies

This study examines the conditional and interaction effects of each of four dimensions of the epistemological beliefs of college students regarding the ability to learn, the speed of learning, the structure of knowledge, and the stability of knowledge on four measures of the cognitive components (elaboration, rehearsal, organization, metacognition) and four measures of the behavioral components (effort regulation, management of time and study environment, peer learning, help seeking) of self-regulated learning strategies. Students with more sophisticated beliefs about the nature of knowledge and learning were more likely than their peers to use educationally productive cognitive and behavioral strategies in their learning. Beliefs about one’s ability to learn had the most significant and substantial effects, and the structure of knowledge had the second most significant and substantial effects on students’ use of self-regulated cognitive and behavioral learning strategies. Although a student’s belief about the stability of knowledge by itself had a statistically significant effect on only one learning strategy, this belief served as moderator for six of the 11 statistically significant interaction effects of epistemological beliefs on the use of cognitive and behavioral learning strategies. Implications of these findings for theory, research, policy and practice are examined.     

“We Do It, but They Don't”: Multiple Categorizations and Work Team Communication

The present study adopted an intergroup approach to information sharing and ratings of work team communication in a public hospital (N = 142) undergoing large-scale restructuring. Consistent with predictions, ratings of communication followed a double ingroup serving bias: while team members reported sending about the same levels of information to double ingroup members (same work team/same occupational group) as they did to partial ingroup members (same work team/different occupational group), they reported receiving less information from partial ingroup members than from double ingroup members and rated the communication that they received from partial ingroup members as less effective. We discuss the implication of these results for the management of information sharing and organizational communication.