Pr?diktoren von Bildungsprozessen in der Konfirmandenarbeit

Non-formal education has received little attention by empirical research so far. Drawing on a representative study of confirmation work in the Protestant Church in Germany (7404 adolescents, aged 13?C14, and 1430 workers in 520 groups) a multi-level analysis predicts relevant factors for success on the level of individuals (confirmands) as well as on the group level. Criteria variables are the experience of participation, an increase in knowledge, interest in youth-groups and the experience of community. The predictors related to differences between the groups account for a high share of variance (between 11 and 22%). On the individual level, all four predictors (gender, group experience, religiosity, cultural background) are statistically significant. A context effect is identified concerning religiosity. The pedagogical aims and activities contribute to the explanation of variance to a considerable degree.     

Combining full text and bibliometric information in mapping scientific disciplines

In the present study results of an earlier pilot study by Glenisson, Glänzel and Persson are extended on the basis of larger sets of papers. Full text analysis and traditional bibliometric methods are serially combined to improve the efficiency of the two individual methods. The text mining methodology already introduced in the pilot study is applied to the complete publication year 2003 of the journal Scientometrics. Altogether 85 documents that can be considered research articles or notes have been selected for this exercise. The outcomes confirm the main results of the pilot study, namely, that such hybrid methodology can be applied to both research evaluation and information retrieval. Nevertheless, Scientometrics documents published in 2003 cover a much broader and more heterogeneous spectrum of bibliometrics and related research than those analysed in the pilot study. A modified subject classification based on the scheme used in an earlier study by Schoepflin and Glänzel has been applied for validation purposes.     

少年维特的烦恼

《少年维特的烦恼》是第一部让歌德在德国几乎一夜成名的小说。本书1774年秋天在莱比锡书籍展览会上面世,并在那里成了杨销书。由此而来的成功给歌德的一生带来了名誉和财富。歌德(1749—1832)是德国近代杰出的诗人、作家和思想家。世人公认他是继但丁和莎士比亚之后西     

“Should I stay or should I go?” Exploring high school apprentices’ pathways

Completion rates are one measure of the success of apprenticeship training. But little is known about outcomes for youth who begin an apprenticeship in high school. This paper draws primarily on interviews with youth who did not continue training or work in their high school apprenticeship trade in two Canadian provinces. Our analysis focuses on why these youth decided to enrol in high school apprenticeship, why they did not continue and what they did afterwards. Findings suggest that a narrow focus on apprenticeship training completion diverts attention from the complex learning and work transitions experienced by most youth. Instead of assuming a linear pathway from school-to-trades work, we argue that partners involved in high school apprenticeship and policy-makers could do more to raise student awareness of multiple trajectories and skills transfer, make apprenticeship training more expansive, and increase the flexibility of pathways by providing greater articulation between different post-secondary education pathways and opportunities to change direction.     

Examining the link between organizational democracy and employees’ moral development

While much is understood about the role of the family context and educational experiences for moral development, less attention has been devoted to the occupational context. In this research, we used Kohlberg’s approach of moral education as a framework and investigated the relationship between structurally anchored organizational democracy and employees’ moral development. Employees (N = 285) of five conventional (i.e., traditionally owned and hierarchically managed) and five democratic (i.e., collectively owned and democratically managed) enterprises participated in our study. Consistently with our theoretically derived hypotheses, the results provide initial support for the theoretical model in that employees from democratic firms scored higher on moral development than employees from conventional firms. In turn, contrary to our expectations, the socio-moral climate within organizations failed to explain variance in moral development. Theoretical implications of our findings as well as suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Quantitative and qualitative change in children's mental rotation performance

This study investigated quantitative and qualitative changes in mental rotation performance and solution strategies with a focus on sex differences. German children (N = 519) completed the Mental Rotations Test (MRT) in the 5th and 6th grades (interval: one year; age range at time 1: 10–11 years). Boys on average outperformed girls on both occasions (d_T1 = 0.45; d_T2 = 0.35). Strong quantitative change was reflected in increased test scores from time 1 to time 2. The increase was equivalent for girls (d = 1.04) and boys (d = 1.05). Qualitative change was investigated in a multigroup latent transition analysis (LTA) of the MRT items. LTA confirmed findings from prior studies showing that children used different solution strategies to solve the MRT problems. Girls tended to use less efficient strategies than did boys. Moreover, LTA revealed that participants showing inefficient solution strategies at time 1 tended to improve their performance less than students who already showed more elaborate strategies at time 1.     

Search patterns and absorptive capacity: Low- and high-technology sectors in European countries

Searching for externally available knowledge has been characterised as a vital part of the innovation process. Previous research has, however, almost exclusively focused on high-technology environments, largely ignoring the substantial low- and medium-technology sectors of modern economies. We argue that firms from low- and high-technology sectors differ in their search patterns and that these mediate the relationship between innovation inputs and outputs. Based on a sample of 4500 firms from 13 European countries, we find that search patterns in low-technology industries focus on market knowledge and that they differ from technology sourcing activities in high-technology industries.     

Heterogeneity of patenting activity and its implications for scientific research

The increasing commercialization of university discoveries has initiated a controversy on the impact for scientific research. It has been argued that an increasing orientation towards commercialization may have a negative impact on more fundamental research efforts in science. Several scholars have therefore analyzed the relationship between publication and patenting activity of university researchers, and most articles report positive correlations between patenting and publishing activities of scientists. However, previous studies do not account for heterogeneity of patenting activities. This paper explores the incidence of patenting and publishing of scientists distinguishing between corporate patents and patents assigned to non-profit organizations for a large sample of professors active in Germany. While patents assigned to non-profit organizations (incl. individual ownership of the professors themselves) complement publication quantity and quality, patents assigned to corporations are negatively related to quantity and quality of publication output.