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.     

An Approach to Writing Non-fiction

There is plenty of evidence that non-fiction writing tends to have been neglected until quite recently. David Wray and Maureen Lewis discuss the importance of extending the range of children's writing and go on to introduce the use of writing frames, a strategy for scaffolding children's non-fiction writing. This strategy has been extensively trialled as part of the Exeter Extending Literacy Project and does seem to offer some worthwhile benefits in writing development.     

Views of Schooling Held by Children Attending Schools for Pupils with Moderate Learning Difficulties

There has been little research into the views of the consumers of the special education service‐‐the children themselves. Social legislation (e.g., the 1989 Children Act in the UK) has emphasised the importance of discovering the views of the child when planning provision. Similar proposals have been put forward in recent UK documents concerning educational provision (DFE, 1993). This paper reports data based on individual, semi‐structured interviews with 56 children (ages 9 to 11) attending schools for pupils with moderate learning difficulties (MLD/MlD). Interviews probed views about special and mainstream schools and pupils, and perceived reasons for transfer from mainstream to special school. Two areas (teachers as a liked aspect of special and mainstream schools, and problems handling playground relationships) point to key areas of concern for children with learning or intellectual difficulties. Overall, MLD school children were supportive of their special schools. This is discussed in relation to categorization theory.     

Effect of maternal soothing on infant stress response

The effect of maternal soothing to infant inoculation as well as everyday distress on infant cortisol and behavioral responses to stress was examined in two longitudinal samples of 55 and 74 infants, respectively, between 2 and 6 months of age. There was no evidence that maternal soothing was effective in reducing infants' cortisol or behavioral responses to stress. The absence of this relation occurred despite evidence for cross-time stability and cross-situation consistency in maternal soothing. That maternal soothing plays little role in lowering infant responses to stress leaves open the possibilities that other maternal behaviors may mediate children's distress or that infant temperament may be related to infant stress.     

Strategies for Assessing Classroom Teaching: Examining Administrator Thinking as Validity Evidence

All 50 states use observations to evaluate practicing teachers, but we know little about how administrators actually reason when they use those observation protocols. Drawing on think-aloud and stimulated recall data, this study describes the types of strategies and warrants practicing administrators used when rating with their district’s observation protocol. Administrators in a large urban district used an observation protocol aligned to Danielson’s Framework for Teaching to rate a brief lesson clip. Administrators’ thinking was recorded, clarified, and inductively coded. Findings suggest administrator thinking and justification is complex even for short lengths of instruction. Administrators used a range of reasoning strategies, many of which were not sanctioned by their training. Exploratory analyses suggest strategy use was not related to the accuracy of ratings. Implications for the validity of teacher observation scores in high-stakes settings are considered.     

Developmental Change in Infants' Responses to Stress

Infant stress responses to a well-baby physical examination and inoculation were observed longitudinally at 2, 4, and 6 months of age. In general, there were cortisol increases over base to the procedures. Cortisol level and cortisol response decreased with age. These data indicate a developmental shift in adrenocortical functioning between 2 and 6 months of age. Further evidence for this shift was seen in the stability of individual responses between 4 and 6 months of age. Individual differences in both cortisol and behavioral responses showed the most stability between these 2 ages. Moreover, diurnal variation in baseline cortisol level was present only at 6 months of age. While a sizable minority of infants showed stress-related cortisol decreases to the procedures at a given age, there was no evidence for cross-age consistency in individual infants showing these cortisol decreases.     

A comparison of Hispanic and African-American sexually abused girls and their families.

OBJECTIVE: To study the differential effects of sexual abuse on Hispanic (HN) and African-American (AA) girls. METHOD: Sexually abused girls and their caretakers (N = 159), of which 52% (n = 82) were AA (mean age 9.8 years, SD = 3.4, R = 6-17) and 48% (n = 77) were HN (mean age 10.1 years, SD = 3.8, R = 6-18), were included in the study. The mother/caretaker was administered a demographic form, the Achenbach's Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL), and the Family Assessment Measure (FAM-P). The child completed the FAM-C and the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC). The clinician completed the Parental Reaction to Incest Disclosure Scale (PRIDS). RESULTS: HN girls were found to have a greater number of sexually abusive episodes and waited longer to disclose their abuse while AA girls were more likely to have experienced vaginal penetration. The perpetrators of HN girls were older and more likely to be fathers or stepfathers. The mothers/ caretakers of HN girls perceived their children as having significantly more aggressive behavior, anxiety/depression, somatic complaints, internalizing and externalizing behaviors, and had a higher total score on the CBCL than did AA girls. The HN girls were more likely to see their family as dysfunctional with confusion regarding family values and rules. HN mothers/caretakers perceived their families as more conflicted regarding adaptability and family controls. CONCLUSIONS: HN girls experienced more emotional and behavioral problems, and both HN girls and their mothers/caretakers perceived their families as more disturbed and dysfunctional.     

Policy mobilities and methodology: a proposition for inventive methods in education policy studies

ABSTRACT

The argument of this paper is that new methodologies associated with the emerging field of ‘policy mobilities’ can be applied, and are in fact required, to examine and research the networked and relational, or ‘topological’, nature of globalised education policy, which cuts across the new spaces of policymaking and new modes of global educational governance. In this paper, we examine the methodological issues pertaining to the study of the movement of policy. Informed by contemporary methodological thinking around social network analysis and the ethnographic notion of ‘following the policy’, we discuss the limitations of these approaches to adequately address presence in policy network analysis, and the problem of representing speed and intensity of policy mobility, even while these attempt to solve the problem of relationality and territoriality. We conclude that the methodologies of policy mobility are inexorably intertwined with the (constantly) changing phenomena under examination, and hence require what Lury and Wakeford describe as ‘inventive methods’.