‘Observation has set in’: comparing students and peers as reviewers of teaching

Peer review is a powerful method to enhance teaching in higher education. Peers, however, may not be the most relevant people in evaluating teaching success; as the most important stakeholders in learning, students’ evaluations need to be heard. Whilst some efforts to capture ‘the student voice’ are simplistic and may foster consumerist approaches, adopting ‘radical collegiality’ towards students may provide the benefits of peer review whilst avoiding some of its disadvantages. Here we describe the Students as Colleagues project, which trained student volunteers as evaluators of teaching. To assess the ability of students to provide useful reviews, we compared their evaluative feedback with that from academic peers, using a paired design and qualitative and quantitative data. Students gave significantly more positive comments, and just as many negative and directive comments, as academic peers. Student colleagues emphasised the positive personal (rather than professional) capacities of their reviewees, encouraged expressed vulnerability and drew on their broad experiences as students rather than from professional perspectives. Participation changed how students saw their abilities and helped ‘humanise’ both the reviewees and the university as a whole. Our results and standpoint theory suggest that students’ evaluative feedback is the most valuable perspective to inform teaching enhancement.     

Sleep Disturbance and Expressive Language Development in Preschool‐Age Children With Down Syndrome

Recent evidence has suggested that sleep may facilitate language learning. This study examined variation in language ability in 29 toddlers with Down syndrome (DS) in relation to levels of sleep disruption. Toddlers with DS and poor sleep (66%, n = 19) showed greater deficits on parent‐reported and objective measures of language, including vocabulary and syntax. Correlations between sleep and language were found in groups with equivalent medical and social backgrounds and after control for relevant behavioral comorbidities, including autism symptoms. These results emphasize the important role of quality sleep in all children's expressive language development, and may help increase our understanding of the etiology of language deficits in developmental disorders, potentially leading to new treatment approaches.     

Gender Equality Programmes in German Institutions of Higher Education—The North Rhine-Westphalia Case

This article describes the theoretical basis and presents some results of an empirical investigation into all the institutions of higher education in North Rhine-Westphalia, the largest of the German La ?nder that has the largest number of universities (twenty-seven universities and universities of applied sciences, (fachhochschulen), in all). For these institutions, a gender equality policy was elaborated in 1993 by the Ministry of Science and Research of the Land. It is titled ''Basic Principles for the Promotion of Women at the Institutions of Higher Education in North Rhine-Westphalia'' (referred to as ''Basic Principles'' in the text to follow). It became compulsory for all the universities in 1993 and for all the fachhochschulen, as well, in 1995. In 1998, the author was commissioned to assess the impact of these ''basic principles'' three years later.     

Who dares wins? Do higher realistic occupational aspirations improve the chances of migrants for access to dual vocational education and training in Germany?

High educational aspirations are considered to be a crucial factor for educational success and social advancement. As is also the case in many western European countries, migrants in Germany have higher aspirations than non-migrants. Although migrants’ average school performance levels are significantly lower, their greater educational aspirations exert a positive influence on the acquisition of higher educational qualifications. This paper investigates whether higher aspirations are also revealed in respect of Germany’s highly prevalent dual vocational education and training (VET) system and how this affects the transition to dual VET for young people from a migration background. Multivariate analyses using the database of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS) relate to school-leavers in Years 9 and 10 of general schools who aspired to enter dual VET upon completion of schooling. If we control for the main influencing factors, young people from a migrant background are shown to exhibit higher occupational aspirations with regard to dual VET than their counterparts not from a migration background. However, viewed in overall terms, higher occupational aspirations lead to poorer chances of transition to dual VET. This is much more noticeable amongst migrants than amongst non-migrants.     

The Importance of Counseling Self-efficacy: Physiologic Stress in Student Helpers

This study tested whether high counseling self-efficacy was associated with less physiologic stress for student helpers facing difficult helping situations. A total of 225 students completed a counseling self-efficacy measure before providing supportive help. During this time, participants’ blood pressure and heart rate were evaluated. Between the time that participants learned about their upcoming roles as student helpers and began experiencing session-management problems, diastolic blood pressure decreased for those with high self-efficacy, but not for those with low self-efficacy. The results suggest that mental health agencies may consider utilizing counseling self-efficacy measures to identify and develop capable student helpers.     

A Framework for Transition: Supporting 'Learning to Learn' in Higher Education

In this paper, a framework for developing first‐year students' learning is proposed. Its aim is to increase university managers' and teachers' awareness of two issues: (1) that the currently predominant ‘skills’ approaches to the enhancement of student learning are based on a deficiency model and achieve little more than remedying the overt problems of individual students and (2) that a holistic, subject‐specific approach is needed to support all students in the complex process of learning to learn in higher education. The framework aims at facilitating transition to university by helping students to understand what is expected from them at university, by addressing their conceptions of learning and knowledge and by gradually developing their competence as independent learners as well as their competence in constructing knowledge in their discipline. Different contexts are used to apply complementary methods for the development of learning. As the framework relies on the engagement of academic teachers, it is critical that university managers and policy makers give appropriate recognition to effective teaching. This involves instigating changes in conceptions of teaching, providing opportunities for educational development and setting incentives for teachers' commitment to student learning.     

Copyright protection for materials in electronic formats: the CITED solution

A way allowing access to electronically stored copyright material under controlled conditions is described—the CITED solution. The system monitors the use of the store and permits the downloading of copies of documents to authorized users.