II. DEVELOPMENT OF ADOPTED CHILDREN WITH HISTORIES OF EARLY ADVERSITY

This chapter first presents a review of research on the development of adopted children, focusing on meta‐analytic evidence and highlighting comparisons between adopted children with and without histories of early adversity. Some methodological issues arising from this literature are considered as well. Second, 7 longitudinal studies of adopted children's development are described, and the convergence of findings across the longitudinal studies and with the cross‐sectionally based meta‐analytic evidence is discussed. Third, the role of the adoptive family in supporting adopted children's development is explored.     

Teachers' Voices in the Context of Higher Education Reforms in Armenia

In this article, teachers' sense-making and reasoning about higher education reforms in a post Soviet country, namely Armenia, are examined using an analytical framework with six sensitising concepts: beliefs, emotions, attitudes, change knowledge, attributions and organisational culture. The results of semi-structured interviews with 12 Armenian higher education teachers showed that they mainly felt distrust towards reforms and that the implementation initiatives caused dissatisfaction, frustration and therefore distortion. At a deeper level, the teachers mostly felt excluded from the reform process and that their role was depreciated. One striking feature was the predominant causal attribution of teachers to external, unstable and uncontrollable factors which question the success of the reforms.     

The quality of student dialogue in citizenship education

This study investigates the relationship between the quality of student dialogue and students’ ability to justify their viewpoints on a moral issue. A curriculum unit for dialogic citizenship education was developed and implemented in the 8th grade of secondary education. In the final lesson, students discussed a moral issue and then wrote an essay on it. The results show that students who made more value-related utterances during the discussion also referred more often and more explicitly in their individually written essays to moral values. This study indicates that the quality of the content of students’ dialogue is important for their ability to substantiate their opinion on moral issues with value-laden argumentation. Approaches to citizenship education in which dialogue is a central element should, therefore, pay specific attention to the validation of ideas in student dialogue.     

On Subject Variations in Achievement Motivations: A Study in Business Subjects

Student achievement motivations are crucial in learning in two ways: as a determinant and an aim of learning. In this study, we focus on two related questions with regard to achievement motivations: to what extent are they subject-specific, and to what extent are they malleable? Answers to both questions are especially important when aiming to influence motivations. Malleability of motivation is studied by designing structural equation models that explain achievement motivation out of the most stable student characteristics one can think of: gender, and personality traits. Subject matter variability is studied by estimating these models for five main subject areas in a business program. The motivation construct we use is based on the expectancy-value model and distinguishes four different facets: cognitive competence, difficulty, task-value and affect. We find evidence for strong subject-specificity and considerable non-malleability of achievement motivation; part of that last aspect is a remarkably constant over-confidence gender gap present in the data of the calibration of competency beliefs and performance in all subject areas.     

The development of the classroom social climate during the first months of the school year

In this study the mean stability of classroom social climates during the first months of the school year and the deviation of individual classrooms (N = 48) and students (N = 1208) from this general trend were investigated by taping students’ interpersonal perceptions of their teachers. Multilevel growth modeling was used to identify the average development of the classroom social climate and between classroom and student differences in terms of this development. While significant differences between classrooms and students were found, these differences were rather stable over time. Most classrooms showed a slightly u-shaped trajectory. In only very few classrooms the quality of the social climate had increased at the end of the research period as compared to the very first lesson. Differences in the development between classrooms were associated to the emotional distance between teacher and students during the first lesson of the school year.     

Entrepreneurial effectiveness of European universities: An empirical assessment of antecedents and trade-offs

The phenomenon of entrepreneurial universities has received considerable attention over the last decades. An entrepreneurial orientation by academia might put regions and nations in an advantageous position in emerging knowledge-intensive fields of economic activity. At the same time, such entrepreneurial orientation requires reconciliation with the scientific missions of academia. Large-scale empirical research on antecedents of the entrepreneurial effectiveness of universities is scarce. This contribution examines the extent to which scientific productivity affect entrepreneurial effectiveness, taking into account the size of universities and the presence of disciplines, as well as the R&D intensity of the regional business environment (BERD). In addition, we assess the occurrence of trade-offs between different transfer mechanisms (contract research, patenting and spin off activity). The data used pertain to 105 European universities. Our findings reveal that scientific productivity is positively associated with entrepreneurial effectiveness. Trade-offs between transfer mechanisms do not reveal themselves; on the contrary, contract research and spin off activities tend to facilitate each other. Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.     

Influencing citizen behavior: Experiences from multichannel marketing pilot projects

Information technology allows national and local governments to satisfy the needs of citizens in a cost effective way. Unfortunately, citizens still tend to prefer traditional, more costly channels, such as the front desk, phone and mail. Through pilot projects government agencies attempt to influence this behavior of citizens, directing them towards the online channel. With this paper we provide insight into the possibility to influence citizens’ behavior in the complex landscape of multi-channel service provision. The paper systematically compares five pilot projects using a framework that is based on organizational and marketing literature. The results show that socio-psychological factors are crucial in multi-channel management, much more than the technology itself. We conclude that citizens can be directed towards the online channel. However, not all projects are successful. Economic and legal instruments tend to sort more direct effects than communication or service instruments. Moreover, organizational factors such as bureaucracy often hinder eventual success. Choosing a smart and relatively small scope and strong project manager may help to evoke success in directing citizen online behavior.     

Is there an ethics of algorithms?

We argue that some algorithms are value-laden, and that two or more persons who accept different value-judgments may have a rational reason to design such algorithms differently. We exemplify our claim by discussing a set of algorithms used in medical image analysis: In these algorithms it is often necessary to set certain thresholds for whether e.g. a cell should count as diseased or not, and the chosen threshold will partly depend on the software designer’s preference between avoiding false positives and false negatives. This preference ultimately depends on a number of value-judgments. In the last section of the paper we discuss some general principles for dealing with ethical issues in algorithm-design.