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About this issue editor     

Research on pictures in instructional texts: The need for a broadened perspective

Considering the popularity of instructional textbooks, it is a bit surprising that few research studies have examined how pictorial illustrations affect learning from texts. This article takes a look at the research that has been done, notes its diversity of purpose, approach, and methodology, and identifies some shortcomings. The author offers some ideas for future research and suggests that the work might be undertaken by a new type of researcher, one who has traditional research skills as well as the concerns of instructional development specialists.     

Globalisation and the University: Myths and Realities in an Unequal World

Much has been said about the impactof globalisation on higher education. Some haveargued that globalisation, the Internet and thescientific community will level the playingfield in the new age of knowledgeinterdependence. Others claim thatglobalisation means both worldwide inequalityand the McDonaldisation of the university. Itis argued that all of the contemporarypressures on higher education, from thepressures of massification to the growth of theprivate sector, are the results ofglobalisation. There is a grain of truth in allof these hypotheses – and a good deal ofmisinterpretation as well. The purpose of thisessay is to ``unpack'' the realities ofglobalisation and internationalisation inhigher education and to highlight some of theways in which globalisation affects theuniversity. Of special interest here is howglobalisation is affecting higher education indeveloping countries – the nations that willexperience the bulk of higher educationexpansion in the coming decades.     

The paradoxes of patenting at General Electric: Isador Ladoff's journey from Siberian exile to the heart of corporate capitalism

Isador Ladoff (1857-1918) worked briefly in the General Electric Company Research Laboratory, from 1901 to 1903. Since he was not employed to invent, Ladoff maintained that he, not the company, owned his invention of a new arc lamp electrode, eventually winning his case on appeal in 1911. The conduct and course of this patent litigation are examined in the light of Ladoff's remarkable life as a prisoner of the czar in Siberia before his escape to the United States in 1891 and as a socialist activist and writer thereafter. In showing that Ladoff's socialist principles activated his struggle with GE, the essay brings out the ironies of his defense of individualism against the incipient socialism of the laboratory supposedly espoused by officials of the company. The case is interesting in relation to the shift from the ideology, and the reality, of heroic individual invention to that of corporate invention in U.S. industrial research. That shift in turn was a crucial landmark in the longer history of the place of science in negotiation and contest about the relationship between creativity and intellectual property.