Accreditation and Power: A Discourse Analysis of a New Regime of Governance in Higher Education

This article studies discourses within the accreditation of Norwegian higher education conducted by the Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (NOKUT), using one concrete case (the accreditation of bachelor programs in nursing). Analysis of policy documents and accreditation reports are influenced by two of Foucault's concepts of power; governmentality and panopticon. The analysis provides insights into firstly, how the two forms of power are woven into the schemes used for quality control by redefining quality to be a quantifiable concept; secondly, how the supervision of quality gives privilege to specific types of knowledge; thirdly, how supervisory power is reformulated to require self-control mechanisms within higher education in terms of constant quality development and realization of unexploited potentials; and fourthly, how this power legitimates itself by making all parties guardians of quality control, deconstructing the difference between evaluator and evaluated.     

Peer and Faculty Mentoring for Students Pursuing a PHD in Gerontology

The Graduate Center for Gerontology at the University of Kentucky incorporates three levels of mentoring in its PhD program. This project assessed satisfaction with peer and faculty mentoring and explored their perceived benefits and purposes. Core and affiliate faculty and current and graduated students were surveyed. Participants seemed satisfied with the mentoring they were giving and receiving, although all groups discussed limitations. Peer mentors were seen as social support and advice givers, while faculty mentors were viewed as responsible for direction and skill-building. These results can contribute to the development of new mentorship programs and the modification of existing ones.     

Classroom assessment as the co-regulation of learning

ABSTRACT

Until recently, the classroom assessment literature has emphasized the role of teachers and tests, for example investigating teachers’ assessment practices or the quality of classroom tests and other assessments. In contrast, current understandings of teaching and learning emphasize the role of students, as well as the complex interactions between teachers, students, and contexts. We use the literature review method to give substance to a theory of classroom assessment as the co-regulation of learning by teachers, students, instructional materials, and contexts. We organize the literature using a version of Pintrich and Zusho’s theory of the phases and areas of the self-regulation of learning, expanded to include the co-regulation of learning, in order to demonstrate how classroom assessment is related to all aspects of the regulation of learning. We conclude that this is a useful expansion for the field.     

Learning Environment in Light of Positional,Institutional, and Cultural Interpretations: An Empirically-Based Conceptual Analysis

This study explores the possibility that the concept of learning environment (LE) is understood and interpreted differently by various users, depending on their relative positions in the educational system, institutional affiliation, and cultural heritage. The study employs a qualitative approach and is based on 14 semistructured separate interviews with professionals in the field of education. The participants in the study have been chosen from 3 different levels in the educational system (assistants, kindergarten and school teachers, and principals/county government representatives) and across different institutions (kindergartens and schools). The data reveal a clear pattern in which the conceptualization of LE is influenced by the relative positions of the actors, established practices and norms inside the specific system, and the cultural heritage of the given context. The tendency of various stakeholders to understand and interpret LE differently has direct implications for development and implementation of future educational policies. The study emphasizes that the awareness of these effects is important for (a) successful communication between educational professionals operating in different positions in the system, and (b) the academic community, which tends to shape the manner in which the theoretical concepts are defined.     

Investigating the validity of two widely used quantitative text tools

In recent years, readability formulas have gained new prominence as a basis for selecting texts for learning and assessment. Variables that quantitative tools count (e.g., word frequency, sentence length) provide valid measures of text complexity insofar as they accurately predict representative and high-quality criteria. The longstanding consensus of text researchers has been that such criteria will measure readers’ comprehension of sample texts. This study used Bormuth’s (1969) rigorously developed criterion measure to investigate two of today’s most widely used quantitative text tools—the Lexile Framework and the Flesch–Kincaid Grade-Level formula. Correlations between the two tools’ complexity scores and Bormuth’s measured difficulties of criterion passages were only moderately high in light of the literature and new high stakes uses for such tools. These correlations declined a small amount when passages from the University grade band of use were removed. The ability of these tools to predict measured text difficulties within any single grade band below University was low. Analyses showed that word complexity made a larger contribution relative to sentence complexity when each tool’s predictors were regressed on the Bormuth criterion rather than their original criteria. When the criterion was texts’ grade band of use instead of mean cloze scores, neither tool classified texts well and errors disproportionally placed texts from higher grade bands into lower ones. Results suggest these two text tools may lack adequate validity for their current uses in educational settings.     

Early Histories of School‐Aged Children With Attention‐Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder

In a prospective study of developmental outcomes in relation to early‐life otitis media, behavioral, cognitive, and language measures were administered to a large, diverse sample of children at 2, 3, 4, 6, and 9–11 years of age (N = 741). At 9–11 years of age, 9% of the children were categorized as having attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) based on parent report. Compared to the non‐ADHD group, the ADHD group had higher (i.e., less favorable) scores on parent and teacher versions of the Child Behavior Checklist at all ages. Children in the ADHD group also had lower scores on cognitive and receptive language measures in preschool. The findings support the concept that ADHD is a cognitive as well as a behavioral disorder.