Postgraduate Education Towards the Year 2000 — A Changed Role for the Commonwealth Postgraduate Awards Scheme 1

Ph.D. research training in Australia only came into existence after World War II. It grew slowly until the late 1950s when The Commonwealth Postgraduate Award (CPRA) Scheme was introduced to promote the development of research training. The scheme has had an extensive impact on research training, supporting over 700 new students a year by 1982. However, no serious evaluation has been made of the Scheme and whether in the changed circumstances of the 1980s it needs to be revised. The present article reports some of the key results of the evaluation that the Commonwealth Department of Education commissioned. This study has shown that the CPRA scheme achieved its original objectives’, to develop postgraduate research schools; to maintain a flow of highly trained personnel to the workforce; and to promote the full intellectual development of the most talented students. But it is now operating in a new context where the conditions of expansion of the 1960s no longer exist and stronger pressures for relevance are being exerted on university research. In short, education policy and research policy have come into conflict, the result of which is new pressures on research education in general and the CPRA scheme in particular. Solutions to this conflict are proposed, involving no radical alterations of the scheme, but the trial introduction of a pluralist approach to postgraduate support which leaves the present scheme intact but meets the new demands the changing context is placing on postgraduate education.

     

Assessing students’ ability in performing scientific inquiry: instruments for measuring science skills in primary education

Background With the increased attention on the implementation of inquiry activities in primary science classrooms, a growing interest has emerged in assessing students’ science skills. Research has thus far been concerned with the limitations and advantages of different test formats to assess students’ science skills.

Purpose This study explores the construction of different instruments for measuring science skills by categorizing items systematically on three subskill levels (science-specific, thinking, metacognition) as well as on different steps of the empirical cycle.

Sample The study included 128 fifth and sixth grade students from seven primary schools in the Netherlands.

Design and method Seven measures were used: a paper-and-pencil test (PPT), three performance assessments, two metacognitive self-report tests, and a test used as an indication of general cognitive ability.

Results Reliabilities of all tests indicate sufficient internal consistency. Positive correlations between the PPT and the three performance assessments show that the different tests measure a common core of similar skills thus providing evidence for convergent validity. Results also show that students’ ability to perform scientific inquiry is significantly related to general cognitive ability. No relationship was found between the measure of general metacognitive ability and either the PPT or the three performance assessments. By contrast, the metacognitive self-report test constructed to obtain information about the application of metacognitive abilities in performing scientific inquiry, shows significant – although small – correlations with two of the performance assessments. Further explorations reveal sufficient scale reliabilities on subskill and step level.

Conclusions The present study shows that science skills can be measured reliably by categorizing items on subskill and step level. Additional diagnostic information can be obtained by examining mean scores on both subskill and step level. Such measures are not only suitable for assessing students’ mastery of science skills but can also provide teachers with diagnostic information to adapt their instructions and foster the learning process of their students.     

Information access and retrieval with hypermedia information systems

Students' success with interactive information systems (IIS) such as those found in many CD-ROM applications depends to large degree on their capacity accurately to choose and apply search strategies in response to information needs. IIS systems provide many ways to retrieve information, with some methods being more efficient and effective than others. The purpose of this study was to investigate the search strategies employed by novice users of an IIS system and to analyse the problems and issues that were impediments to successful use. A class of 12 year old students was instructed in the use of an electronic encyclopaedia. The students used the encyclopaedia as an information source for individual projects and on completion their information skills tested and analysed. The study found that students tended to employ inefficient search strategies and experienced difficulty in creating search requests for information related problems.     

The rôle of performance indicators in higher education

This paper arises from the experiences in five countries (Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom) in developing and using performance indicators in government-institutional relationships. The rôle of performance indicators in higher education depends on the political culture, the educational funding system and the quality assessment procedures that determine the optimal allocation of resources in a particular country. The political culture of education can be geared, on the one hand, to equivalence in the provision of educational opportunities and, on the other, to variety in the educational system. The funding system can be incremental or differential. Quality assessment can aim at quality across the system or at comparative quality judgements. Ten lessons for government and intermediate funding agencies are drawn, which are believed to facilitate the debate on the development and the use of indicators in government-institutional relations.The authors wish to thank Marianne Bauer, Toril Johansson and Hugo von Linstow for their contributions from Sweden, Norway and Denmark.     

The Impact of Terrorist Attack News on Moral Intuitions and Outgroup Prejudice

Using logic suggested by the model of intuitive morality and exemplars, we examined the impact of exposure to terrorist attack news coverage on the salience of moral intuitions and prosocial behavioral intentions toward outgroup members. In an experiment, participants were randomly assigned to watch news of the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks or a control news story. Afterward, we measured the salience of five moral intuitions (sensitivity to care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity) and the participants’ prejudice (i.e., the lack of intentions to help outgroup members). Results showed that exposure to terrorist attack news (a) increased the salience of respect for authority and subsequently (b) reduced prosocial behavioral intentions toward outgroup members. Closer inspection revealed that authority salience mediated the effect of terrorist news exposure on these behavioral intentions toward outgroup members. In a second study using the same design as in the first study, we ensured that the ingroup and the outgroup addressed in the first study were indeed perceived differently on dimensions of ingroup membership.     

Journalists in times of crisis: Experiences and practices of Palestinian journalists during the 2014 Gaza war

This study explores the experiences and practices of Palestinian journalists working for Palestinian media outlets during the 2014 Gaza war. Our findings, based on data gathered from 10 in-depth interviews, indicate that the practices of Palestinian reporters and editors who covered the 2014 Gaza war were shaped by their personal experiences during the war and by a strong motivation to represent the Palestinian narrative, perspective, and suffering in the conflict with Israel.