Defining student diversity: categorizing and processes of marginalization in Swedish schools

The article presents an analysis of how diversity is defined and attended to in Swedish schools. The research reported has been carried out as a case study of categorizing practices that concern the uses of neuropsychiatric diagnoses, notably ADHD. The data were collected as part of a larger study. The interaction over a two-year period between the parents of a boy (William, aged 5.5 years) and representatives of the school (school psychologist, principal, teacher etc.) has been analysed. It is shown that parents and professionals provide different accounts of William’s difficulties. The parents, while not denying that their son causes problems in class, argue that the boy will mature and that the problems will disappear. The representatives of the school try to convince the parents that a neuropsychiatric examination of the boy will be beneficial to all parties. The long process of negotiation can be understood as a rhetorical drama, where the category ‘ADHD’ serves as the resolution of a complex institutional problem in the modern welfare state.     

Stichwort: Entwicklung sprachlicher Fähigkeiten von Kindern und Jugendlichen im Bildungskontext

This article contains a review of recent research on the topic of language development in an educational research perspective. The contribution is focussed on research which was carried out in the German education system. The starting point of such research was the insight that mastery of a language is of core importance for educational success as well as for participation in a society. The research which is presented in this review article strives to identify factors that are relevant for the development of different language abilities during an education biography. The article starts with an overview of international and national research traditions which build the ground for the investigation of language development in an educational research perspective. A second part of the article deals with research projects that aimed to unveil factors which are influential for differential language development during a school career. In the third part of the article, an outlook on recent research is presented which deals with the question how language development can be fostered and supported by educational institutions. In Germany, such projects are just beginning. They mainly derive from the evaluation of model projects or other practical experiments; only very few experimental intervention studies have been carried out.     

Relation of resemblance in information retrieval

A method using the amount of semantic information of query terms as weight in a fuzzy relation of resemblance is presented. The relation can be used to partially order documents in decreasing order of resemblance with the query. Large operational bibliographic data bases are used to test the validity of the approach.     

Exploring Race Differences in Correlates of Seniors’ Satisfaction with Undergraduate Education

This study employed multiple linear regression and decision tree analysis to examine the correlates of overall satisfaction with undergraduate education for white, Asian American, Latino and African American seniors enrolled at 17 doctoral/research universities. Satisfaction with the overall quality of instruction and social involvement were the strongest predictors of overall satisfaction for all seniors. The predictive importance of other measures of the academic experience, social integration and performance varied both within and across race groups. Findings argue for adopting a variety of institutional strategies to address the needs of different segments of the undergraduate population.