Indicators and outcomes of Canadian university research: Proxies becoming goals?

This paper analyzes Canadian Government attempts to encourage and measure commercialization of university knowledge for socio-economic improvement. Universities are regarded as major, insufficiently exploited, repositories of knowledge. Here, paths by which knowledge can be transferred across institutional boundaries, and various input and output/outcome measures are identified. Available Canadian data are evaluated and a detailed quantitative and qualitative study of one institution is presented. Three key issues emerge: (1) current proxies focus on licensing and spin-off, and do not measure several important paths of knowledge flow; (2) most readily available proxies are derived from aggregate data and are inadequate to fully reflect the idiosyncratic and path-dependent nature of innovation; (3) if the goals and incentives of the actors in the ‘triple helix’ are skewed or misinterpreted by indicators, universities and firms may engage in counterproductive activities. We propose additional indicators that might help to prevent one measurable dimension from becoming the policy driver to the detriment of the overall goals.     

Early prediction of individual growth in reading

Seventy four boys with reading disabilities and amatched control group of normal readers were followedduring their compulsory schooling (to grade 9). Worddecoding performance was assessed with the Wordchainstest on three occasions. For each student a lineargrowth function was estimated. The slope parameter wasused as the dependent variable in a multipleregression analysis with a large number of explanatoryfactors from grades 2 and 3 including phonologicalskills, reading and spelling, non-verbal intelligence,motor skills, eye movements, teacher ratings of schoolbehaviour and parents' education. The proportion ofvariance in growth explained for the reading disabledboys amounted to 25%, the most powerful predictorsbeing early reading performance and non-verbalintelligence. More surprisingly, neither teacherratings nor family background gave useful predictiveinformation. For the control group none of theindependent variables explained the variance of growthin reading.     

The Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters Program's Relationship with Mother and School Outcomes

Research Findings: This study investigated the relationship of the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) program to mothers' involvement in education at home and school, student school readiness in kindergarten, and student academic outcomes at 3rd grade. HIPPY serves a mostly minority, low-income family population and employs home visitors that are mostly female and Spanish speaking. Using a within-group analysis, we found that HIPPY mothers increased educational activities in their home with their children after 1 year of home-based intervention. The majority (84.8%) of HIPPY kindergartners were rated as “ready for school” by their kindergarten teachers according to a within-group analysis. In addition, between-group analyses showed that HIPPY kindergartners had higher attendance rates, higher prekindergarten enrollment, and higher promotion to 1st grade compared to other kindergartners in the school district. HIPPY 3rd graders scored significantly higher on a state-mandated math achievement test than their matched peers. Practice or Policy: The results suggest that HIPPY had a positive relationship with families and schools through improved parent involvement and student school outcomes.     

On the alignment of teachers’ mathematical content knowledge assessments with the common core state standards

Instruments designed to measure teachers’ knowledge for teaching mathematics have been widely used to evaluate the impact of professional development and to investigate the role of teachers’ knowledge in teaching and student learning. These instruments assess a mixture of content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. However, little attention has been given to the content alignment between such instruments and curricular standards, particularly in regard to how content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge items are distributed across mathematical topics. This article provides content maps for two widely used teacher assessment instruments in the USA relative to the widely adopted Common Core State Standards. This common reference enables comparisons of content alignment both between the instruments and between parallel forms within each instrument. The findings indicate that only a small number of items on both instruments are designed to capture teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and that the majority of these items are focused on curricular topics in the later grades rather than in the early grades. Furthermore, some forms designed for use as pre- and post-assessment of professional development or teacher education are not parallel in terms of curricular topics, so estimates of teachers’ knowledge growth based on these forms may not mean what users assume. The implications of these findings for teacher educators and researchers who use teacher knowledge instruments are discussed.

     

Does Audience Participation on Facebook Influence the News Agenda? A Case Study of The Rachel Maddow Show

Social media have been theorized as being able to break the press' monopoly on agenda-setting, giving the public greater influence over which stories are covered in the news. This study uses a cross-lagged panel analysis to determine to what extent audience conversations on The Rachel Maddow Show's Facebook Page may have influenced the selection of issues covered in the TV broadcast. Results show a positive correlation between stories discussed on Facebook and the subsequent airing of similar stories on TV. The evidence also suggests that social media may enable many factors that influence both the media and the public agendas.     

Assessing the impact of a wildlife education program on Japanese attitudes and behavioral intentions

Human–wildlife conflicts are common in agricultural communities and mountainous villages in Japan. Tochigi prefecture has one of the highest amounts of agricultural damage caused by wildlife in the country. To reduce conflicts, the Nature Preservation Division of Tochigi Prefecture launched a wildlife damage prevention program. We evaluated the effects of this program on residents’ attitudes and behavioral intentions by comparing a model district receiving the treatment program to a nearby control district. We conducted a survey of all households registered either in the residential organization or telephone book in each district (n?=?423), with a 46% response rate. The model district did not differ from the control except for greater perceived behavioral control regarding wildlife damage among residents in the model district (F?=?3.83, df?=?1, p?=?0.05). An unanticipated outcome was the development of a community-based wildlife group in the model district. In both model and control districts, subjective norm (perceived social pressure to engage or not to engage in a behavior) was the strongest predictor of behavioral intentions, unlike results of studies conducted in the US.