Promoting entrepreneurship education among university students: design and evaluation of an intervention programme / Fomento de la educación emprendedora entre el alumnado universitario: diseño y evaluación de un programa de intervención

For the consolidation of entrepreneurial education as a field of research, a number of challenges must be met, among them, a better connection between pedagogical objectives and the design of programmes, as well as greater methodological rigour in the evaluation of their impact. With this in mind, this paper analyses the results of an entrepreneurial education programme carried out with a group of students from a Spanish university, contrasting the results with a control group. The results indicate that, after this process, the participating students displayed greater entrepreneurial potential than the group of students that had not participated. However, this difference is due more to a loss of entrepreneurial intention in the group not participating in the programme than to an improvement in the participating students.     

Milieuspezifische Bildungsstrategien in Familie und Gleichaltrigengruppe

Zusammenfassung Der Topos Bildungsungleichheit hat in der jüngsten Zeit eine Renaissance erfahren. Wie im Anschluss an den so genannten Sputnik-Schock und die Diskussionen der 1960er-bis 70er-Jahre wird durch den PISA-Schock die Frage nach der Qualit?t von Bildung erneut virulent. Gleichzeitig jedoch scheint die heutige bildungstheoretische Debatte zu eingeengt. Sie reduziert sich auf institutionalisierte schulische Bildung und vernachl?ssigt die zentrale Bedeutung au?erschulischer Bildungsprozesse, die sozialstrukturell variieren. So lassen sich aufgrund der — allerdings trotz sozialwissenschaftlicher Dauerbeobachtungen bis heute leider dünnen — Forschungsbasis deutliche Differenzen in milieuspezifischen Bildungsstrategien von Heranwachsenden und ihren Eltern feststellen. In Familie und Gleichaltrigengruppe herrschen demnach erfahrungsbezogene Bildungsinhalte und Strategien vor, die mit den in der Schule dominierenden Leistungs- und Qualifikationsanforderungen auf sehr unterschiedliche Weise zusammentreffen. Die vorgelegte mesotheoretische Bestimmung von Bildungsstrategien weist auf M?glichkeiten einer differenzierten Analyse von Bildungsprozessen hin, die an die makrostrukturellen Pr?missen des Systems sozialer Ungleichheit ebenso anschlussf?hig ist wie an mikrostrukturelle, lebensweltliche Erfahrungsbezüge der Schülerinnern und Schüler.

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Summary Milieu-specific Educational Strategies in Families and Peer Groups “Educational disadvantage” is experiencing a renaissance as a topic of educational debate. Just as following the so-called Sputnik-Shock and discussions in the ’60s and ’70s, PISA has renewed the debate on the quality of education. At the same time, the perspective of current educational theory seems too narrow. It focuses on institutionalized school education and overlooks the central importance of educational processes outside of the school, which vary according to social structure. Despite continuous observations within this field, scientific research is weaker than might be expected. However, differences in milieu-specific strategies for education are clearly identifiable between young people and their parents. We propose that experience-based educational content and strategies predominate in both families and peer groups, and that these coincide with the achievements- and qualifications-based educational demands within schools in quite different ways. The following meso-theoretic investigation of educational strategies points to the potential of analyses, which can integrate both the macro-structural conditions of systems of inequality and the experiential, micro-structural reference points of pupils.

     

Impact of science-technology learning environment characteristics on learning outcomes: pupils’ perceptions and gender differences

Science and technology are connected to each other and are mutually inspiring. The science-technology curriculum for junior-high school in Israel suggests that teachers integrate these subjects. In addition, this curriculum calls for infusing thinking competencies into the learning subjects and for implementing alternatives in assessment methods in the classes. The current research included three stages: field research, pilot research and expanded research. In the field research, an intervention program was planned and implemented. The intervention program included a three-year inservice training workshop consisting of 224 hours each year. Quantitative and qualitative tools were used to assess teachers implementation of the intervention program. The findings revealed the characteristics of the science-technology learning environment and various learning outcomes. The pilot research enabled the development and validation of a questionnaire called the Science-Technology Learning Environment Questionnaire (STLEQ). The STLEQ was aimed at assessing teachers and pupils perceptions of learning environment. The conclusions from the pilot research showed differences between teachers and pupils perceptions towards the impact of learning environment characteristics on learning outcomes.In the expanded research, two cohorts of pupils participated, namely, the 2002 cohort (N = 207) and the 2003 cohort (N = 159). These cohorts had studied science-technology in junior-high school. The findings of the expanded research partly match the findings from the pilot research, leading to insight into the pupils perspective of the science-technology learning environment. No gender differences were found in pupils scoring of learning outcomes. On the other hand, boys scored higher than girls on Computer Usage. This research enables researchers and teachers to use the questionnaire in order to investigate pupils perceptions of their learning environment.     

An approach to offline handwritten Chinese character recognition based on segment evaluation of adaptive duration

This paper presents a methodology for off-line handwritten Chinese character recognition based on mergence of consecutive segments of adaptive duration. The handwritten Chinese character string is partitioned into a sequence of consecutive segments,which are combined to implement dissimilarity evaluation within a sliding window whose durations are determined adaptively by the integration of shapes and context of evaluations. The average stroke width is estimated for the handwritten Chinese character string,and a set of candidate character segmentation boundaries is found by using the integration of pixel and stroke features. The final decisions on segmentation and recognition are made under minimal arithmetical mean dissimilarities. Experiments proved that the proposed approach of adaptive duration outperforms the method of fixed duration,and is very effective for the recognition of overlapped,broken,touched,loosely configured Chinese characters.     

University entrepreneurship in a developing country: The case of the P. Universidad Católica de Chile, 1985–2000

Privatization in higher education is usually understood either as the surge of private institutions or as universities’ growing reliance on private sources of funding or otherwise operating more like firms. Joining the growing literature on university entrepreneurship, this is a case study on the less examined problem of entrepreneurial universities in developing countries. In a period of roughly 15 years, the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Chile, founded in 1888, turned itself from a mostly teaching institution to a research-oriented university, responsible for one-fourth of the Chile’s mainstream scientific output and 40% of all Ph.D.s awarded nationally. Yet, public funding represents today only 17% of its revenues, down from almost 90% in 1972. How such academic development could have occurred as the State withdrew and the market took hold of Chilean higher education after the reforms introduced by the military rule of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990) is the theme of this work. Universidad Católica’s policies and strategies are described, and the factors contributing to its success, together with their limitations, identified. The case suggests that orientation to the market can be more a means for survival and growth under the pressure of privatization, than a result of a ‘Triple Helix’ strategy of universities, government and industry to generate innovation out of academic knowledge. Secondly, while in the industrialized world, higher education entrepreneurship is associated with knowledge production for economic development (‘Mode 2’), entrepreneurial universities in the context of developing countries may just be finding their way to the academic, disciplinary mode of research.     

Lymphotactin enhances the in-vitro immune efficacy of dendritoma formed by dendritic cells and mouse hepatocellular carcinoma cells

Objective: To investigate the in-vitro antitumor immune responses of dendritoma formed by mouse hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells and lymphotactin (Lptn) gene modified dendritic cells (DCs). Method: DCs prepared from mouse bone marrow were genetically modified by lymphotactin adenovirus, and fused with H22 cells by polyethylene glycol (PEG). RT-PCR and ELISA were employed to identify lymphotactin expression at mRNA and protein level. Cell phenotypes and fusion efficiency was detected by FACS. The stimulatory effect of DC on T cells was detected by mixed lymphocyte reaction. The cytotoxicity activity against H22 cells was assayed by LDH method. Results: Lymphotactin could be efficiently expressed by DCLptn/H22 hybridoma. DCLptn/H22 cells could induce potent T cell proliferation effect and generate strong cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) reaction against allogenic H22 cells. Conclusion: Lymphotactin genetic modification could enhance the in vitro immune activity of the dendritoma.     

Latinx students’ experiences with college access and preparation at college preparatory charter schools

Charter schools that target underserved communities, including Latinxs, have proliferated in the U.S., claiming a unique, more autonomous and successful alternative to traditional public schools, often with a promise of increased postsecondary access and preparation. However, there is conflicting evidence regarding their effectiveness on academic outcomes, prompting additional research on charter schools. This study examined the college access and preparation experiences of 14 Latinxs attending college preparatory charter schools within one school system in Texas. Findings highlight how schools assisted students in preparing for college, but challenges in accessing college knowledge and assistance still existed, particularly for undocumented students.     

A Conceptual Change Teaching Strategy to Facilitate High School Students' Understanding of Electrochemistry

Recent research in chemistry education has shown an increasing interest in the facilitation of conceptual change in student understanding of chemical concepts. Most of the studies have tried to show the difference in student performance on algorithmic and conceptual problems. The objective of this study is to go beyond and design a teaching strategy based on two teaching experiments that could facilitate students' conceptual understanding of electrochemistry. The study is based on two sections (control, n = 29; experimental, n = 28) of 10th grade high school students at a public school in Venezuela. Experimental group participated in two teaching experiments designed to generate situations/experiences in which students are forced to grapple with alternative responses leading to cognitive conflicts/contradictions. Results obtained show that learning electrochemistry involves both algorithmic and conceptual problems. On Posttest 1, 93% of the experimental group students responded correctly, in contrast to 39% of the control group. On Posttest 2, 39% of the experimental group responded correctly, in contrast to 0% of the Control group. The difference in performance on both posttests is statistically significant (p < 0.001). It is concluded that the teaching experiments facilitated students' understanding (progressive transitions) of electrochemistry.     

Adaptive swarm-based routing in communication networks

Swarm intelligence inspired by the social behavior of ants boasts a number of attractive features,including adaptation,robustness and distributed,decentralized nature,which are well suited for routing in modern communication networks.This paper describes an adaptive swarm-based routing algorithm that increases convergence speed,reduces routing instabilities and oscillations by using a novel variation of reinforcement learning and a technique called momentum.Experiment on the dynamic network showed that adaptive swarm-based routing learns the optimum routing in terms of convergence speed and average packet latency.