Postgraduate study and managers’ subsequent work experience: an exploratory evaluation

Drawing on an exploratory qualitative study, this article considers the link between business school teaching at graduate level and subsequent work behaviour and experiences of former students. It evaluates the student experience some time after graduation. The findings of the retrospective evaluation point to the value of classroom peer discussion, the testing of ideas against prior work experience and the opportunity to make sense of organisational issues by setting them into broader context. The importance of andragogical approaches to teaching is discussed as well as the implications of the study findings for teaching quality enhancement.     

After a Cesarean…What's a Birth Professional to Do?

The discrepancy between the evidence supporting vaginal birth after cesarean and actual medical practice illuminates the larger issues of evidence-based care versus current obstetrical practice. Although the reasons for the disconnect between what we know to be healthy birth practices and what women actually experience are multiple and complex, a commitment to providing accurate education, truly client-centered support, and active patient advocacy will give women the ability to insist on best practice care for themselves and their babies. The International Cesarean Awareness Network believes that all childbirth professionals and advocates share a responsibility to promote change and must work together to be effective.     

Researching primary engineering education: UK perspectives,an exploratory study

This paper draws attention to the findings of an exploratory study that critically identified and analysed relevant perceptions of elementary level engineering education within the UK. Utilising an approach based upon grounded theory methodology, 30 participants including teachers, representatives of government bodies and non-profit providers of primary level engineering initiatives were interviewed. Three main concepts were identified during the analysis of findings, each relevant to primary engineering education. These were pedagogic issues, exposure to engineering within the curriculum and children's interest. The paper concludes that the opportunity to make a real difference to children's education by stimulating their engineering imagination suggests this subject area is of particular value.     

The effects of the Kalamazoo Promise on college choice

On November 10, 2005, then Superintendent of the Kalamazoo Public School System, Janice Brown announced—to the surprise of Kalamazoo’s residents—the beginning of the Kalamazoo Promise. Fully funded by a set of anonymous donors, the Kalamazoo Promise is an urban revitalization program that offers up to four years of free tuition to any public college or university in the state of Michigan for graduates of the Kalamazoo Public School system who meet certain eligibility criteria. Using the subsidy as a source of exogenous variation in the price of college, we use quasi-experimental methods to evaluate the impact of the subsidy on college choice. We find that the Kalamazoo Promise increases the likelihood that students from Kalamazoo Public Schools consider public institutions in Michigan. In addition, we find that the Kalamazoo Promise especially impacts the college choice set of students from families who earn less than $50,000 in annual income.     

Baseball

The purpose of this study was to quantify and compare kinematic, temporal, and kinetic characteristics of American and Korean professional pitchers in order to investigate differences in pitching mechanics, performance, and injury risks among two different cultures and populations of baseball pitchers. Eleven American and eight Korean healthy professional baseball pitchers threw multiple fastball pitches off an indoor throwing mound positioned at regulation distance from home plate. A Motion Analysis three‐dimensional automatic digitizing system was used to collect 200 Hz video data from four electronically synchronized cameras. Twenty kinematic, six temporal, and 11 kinetic variables were analyzed at lead foot contact, during the arm cocking and arm acceleration phases, at ball release, and during the arm deceleration phase. A radar gun was used to quantify ball velocity. At lead foot contact, the American pitchers had significantly greater horizontal abduction of the throwing shoulder, while Korean pitchers exhibited significantly greater abduction and external rotation of the throwing shoulder. During arm cocking, the American pitchers displayed significantly greater maximum shoulder external rotation and maximum pelvis angular velocity. At the instant of ball release, the American pitchers had significantly greater forward trunk tilt and ball velocity and significantly less knee flexion, which help explain why the American pitchers had 10% greater ball velocity compared to the Korean pitchers. The American pitchers had significantly greater maximum shoulder internal rotation torque and maximum elbow varus torque during arm cocking, significantly greater elbow flexion torque during arm acceleration, and significantly greater shoulder and elbow proximal forces during arm deceleration. While greater shoulder and elbow forces and torques generated in the American pitchers helped generate greater ball velocity for the American group, these greater kinetics may predispose this group to a higher risk of shoulder and elbow injuries.     

Development of auditory event-related potentials in young children and relations to word-level reading abilities at age 8 years

A relationship between brain responses at birth and later emerging language and reading skills have been shown, but questions remain whether changes in brain responses after birth continue to predict the mastery of language-related skills such as reading development. To determine whether developmental changes in the brain-based perceptual skills are systematically related to differences in word-level reading proficiency at age 8 years, brain event-related potentials (ERPs) to speech and nonspeech stimuli were recorded annually at the ages of 1 through 8 years in a sample of 109 typically developing children. Two measures of word-level reading (one that requires decoding of real words and one of pseudowords) were administered at age 8 years. Growth curve analysis, using the hierarchical linear models, related reading performance (average versus low) to the longitudinal maturation in the ERP waveform peak and latencies. Maturational changes (e.g., slope, acceleration, and cubic growth) in N1 amplitude from ages 1 to 4 were related to proficiency in decoding pseudoword stimuli only, with children who were less proficient in decoding pseudowords evidencing more steeply negative declines in amplitude with age, particularly at the frontal and parietal recording sites in response to both speech and nonspeech stimuli. In contrast, proficiency in decoding real words was related to developmental changes in N2 amplitudes from ages 4 to 8 only at the parietal recording site, and only in response to nonspeech stimuli. The early development of biologically based differences in the perception and processing of auditory information contributes to later group differences in reading proficiencies at school age.     

Opportunities to Learn in the Budapest Mathematics Classroom

This paper examines the nature of the problems posed, the processes by which their solutions were made public, their structural contribution to a lesson and the opportunities they offered for the learning of mathematics in Budapest, Hungary. The problems were derived from observations, the processes of which were informed by various comparative studies, of 94 mathematics lessons in the 10–14 age range. Problems, the analysis and categorisation of which were informed by the literature, tended to fall into two categories – single response with high levels of cognitive demand and multiple response with high levels of cognitive demand. Structurally lessons fell into a well practised pattern of classroom behaviour. They began with a public review of homework, comprising two or three multiple response problems which were solved collaboratively. This was followed by a warm-up period involving the oral setting and mental solving of a few single response problems. Lastly, the main body of the lesson involved several cycles in which a multiple response problem was posed, attempted individually before solutions were shared publicly. Lessons ended with homework being set. The discussion of the findings is framed by Hungary's variable performance on recent international tests of mathematical attainment.     

A school wide approach to leading pedagogical enhancement: An Australian perspective

This paper presents how some Australian schools are changing their approaches to leading the teaching and learning in their diverse and multi-characteristic contexts. Experiences of these schools shows that the development of a school wide approach to pedagogy and its implementation needs to be firmly embedded in the leadership of learning. Drawing on recent research conducted in the Sydney Catholic Education Office system in Australia (Crowther et al. in Leading and Managing 18(2):1–33, 2012) there is evidence of relationship between the development and implementation of a school wide approach to pedagogy and student achievement. There is also evidence to support leadership that is based on a mutualistic relationship between teacher leaders and the principal. This paper focuses on the way schools have used their visions and pedagogical frameworks to enhance whole of school quality outcomes. It highlights the power of teacher leaders taking responsibility for pedagogical development and implementation. In addition, it illustrates the power of mutualistic relationships (parallel leadership) when the principal takes responsibility for unleashing and trusting the creative expertise of teacher leaders in line with the role of strategic leadership and management.