LEARNING IN HIGHER EDUCATION AND ITS OUTCOMES

The increasing diversity and internationalization of higher education in Europe require greater sophistication in the means of assessment of individual higher education institutions, individual units within given institutions, and learning outputs and outcomes. A short historical overview of assessment in Europe and in the United States is given followed by proposals to refine and to broaden specific aspects of evaluation. The authors suggest the development of instruments and procedures aimed at measuring learned abilities and adressing them in the context of curricula, learning environment, teaching, and learning; instruments which can measure both vertical and horizontal differences; and instruments suitable for measuring both outputs and outcomes. They further suggest a number of study design elements and conclude with a recommendation that CHER stimulate research in this crucial domain.     

Pathways From Childhood Sociomoral Sensitivity in Friendship,Insecurity, and Peer Rejection to Adult Friendship Quality

Across the life span, friendship is an important component of people’s support networks. This article explores the developmental roots of adult friendship intimacy and satisfaction, taking into consideration the early interplay between sociomoral sensitivity in friendship, insecurity in peer contexts, and peer rejection. Data (N = 176) came from the longitudinal study “Individual Development and Social Structure.” Respondents were surveyed repeatedly from age 7 to 37 years. Autoregressive cross-lagged panel models show that sociomoral sensitivity in friendship protects adolescents from peer rejection and is reciprocally associated with insecurity. Childhood and adolescent sociomoral sensitivity antecede early adult friendship intimacy, which, in turn, antecedes friendship satisfaction in mid-adulthood. The findings indicate a sequence of pathways from sociomoral sensitivity developed early in life to friendship quality in adulthood.     

The Big-fish–little-pond-effect Stands Up to Critical Scrutiny: Implications for Theory, Methodology, and Future Research

The big-fish–little-pond effect (BFLPE) predicts that equally able students have lower academic self-concepts (ASCs) when attending schools where the average ability levels of classmates is high, and higher ASCs when attending schools where the school-average ability is low. BFLPE findings are remarkably robust, generalizing over a wide variety of different individual student and contextual level characteristics, settings, countries, long-term follow-ups, and research designs. Because of the importance of ASC in predicting future achievement, coursework selection, and educational attainment, the results have important implications for the way in which schools are organized (e.g., tracking, ability grouping, academically selective schools, and gifted education programs). In response to Dai and Rinn (Educ. Psychol. Rev., 2008), we summarize the theoretical model underlying the BFLPE, minimal conditions for testing the BFLPE, support for its robust generalizability, its relation to social comparison theory, and recent research extending previous implications, demonstrating that the BFLPE stands up to scrutiny. Quotations (associated page numbers) to the Dai and Rinn (2008) article are based on a prepublication version of the article available to the authors of this article that may have changed during the final preparation for publication. The authors would also like to express thanks to David Dai and Anne Rinn for their encouragement and assistance to us in preparation of our article, whilst still acknowledging that they might not agree will all the views expressed here.