Costs and benefits of inter-departmental innovation collaboration

Inter-departmental innovation collaboration facilitates innovation performance. At the same time, it has been identified as a source of increased coordination costs. Using organizational information processing theory, this paper builds and tests hypotheses on the costs and benefits of innovation-related collaboration within firms. Based on a sample of 433 German manufacturing firms we show inter-departmental innovation collaboration to increase process innovation performance, but also to produce costs in terms of project delay and project termination. These costs, however, do not affect innovation performance at the firm level. This finding suggests firms to be well able to balance the costs and benefits of inter-departmental collaboration across their innovation project portfolio. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

Day-to-day Variation in Autonomy-Supportive and Psychologically Controlling Parenting: The Role of Parents’ Daily Experiences of Need Satisfaction and Need Frustration

Objective. Autonomy-supportive and psychologically controlling parenting have been shown to relate to positive and negative developmental outcomes, respectively. Most research that addresses antecedents of these parenting constructs has focused on the predictive role of between-parent differences (e.g., personality). To gain insight in dynamics of within-parent changes in reported parenting, this study focused on daily fluctuations in reported autonomy-supportive and psychologically controlling parenting and examined the role of parents’ need satisfaction and need frustration in accounting for those fluctuations. Design. Mothers (M age = 45) and fathers (M age = 47) of 198 adolescents (M age = 15) participated in a 7-day diary study. Results. Multilevel modeling provided evidence for significant day-to-day variability in both parenting dimensions. Daily fluctuations in need satisfaction were related to daily fluctuations in reported autonomy-supportive parenting and daily fluctuations in need frustration were related to daily fluctuations in reported psychologically controlling parenting. These associations were not moderated by between-parent differences in those parenting dimensions. Conclusions. The findings provide evidence for the role of parents’ own needs-related experiences in their daily display of autonomy-supportive and psychologically controlling parenting.     

Explaining effects and side effects of school inspections: a path analysis

There are large differences between schools with regard to how they are affected by a school inspection. This study provides quantitative evidence about the extent to which perceived effects and side effects of an inspection are related to the inspection’s judgement on the school, to features of the inspection, and to school features. This study draws on quantitative data collected from 2,202 teachers in Flemish primary and secondary schools that had recently been inspected. Using path analysis, it investigates the existence and strength of relationships between the perceived effects and side effects of inspection, on the one hand, and the perceived inspection quality, the perceived school’s policy-making capacities, and the inspection judgement, on the other hand. The analysis reveals that most effects and several side effects are predominantly explained by the perceived inspection quality. Emotional side effects during inspection are best predicted by the school’s policy-making capacities.     

Understanding students' errors with Prolog unification

One of the mechanisms that a student of Prolog must learn to understand and to use is unification. Initially students have only a partial understanding of unification and therefore they are not able to fully understand the execution of a program. This paper shows that a considerable part of the errors that students make can be explained by an impaired version of the correct algorithm. The changes from the correct algorithm to the false algorithms can be justified by a psychologically plausible mechanism.     

Environmental education excursions and proximity to urban green space – densification in a ‘compact city’

The value of urban green space for environmental education fieldwork is empirically investigated in a study among all secondary schools in Amsterdam. The article describes how the proximity of schools to green spaces emerges as a new factor in the ‘sustainable city’ and the ‘compact city’ debate. For fieldwork excursions proximity to green spaces is crucial for establishing a pattern of outdoor environmental education. Once established, it shapes teachers’ attitudes on excursions. A linear structural path analysis reveals how this in turn results in more fieldwork excursions to other destinations. Interviews with teachers show how this can be interpreted mainly as a result from iterative positive experiences with excursions close to the school, which are triggered by the availability of nearby green space. Remarkably, beside the effects of green spaces for well-being and health, the significance of green space for environmental education of children remained under-investigated. This argument came prominently to the fore in a case of urban densification within the framework of compact city policies. In the dispute about the elimination of green space, citizens claimed a high educational value would vanish, but they felt this value was not recognized in the decision-making process.     

At-risk at the gate: prediction of study success of first-year science and engineering students in an open-admission university in Flanders—any incremental validity of study strategies?

European Journal of Psychology of Education - Against the background of the increasing need for skilled scientists and engineers, the heterogeneous inflow of incoming students in science and...     

Loosely‐guided,self‐directed learning versus strictly‐guided,station‐based learning in gross anatomy laboratory sessions

Anatomy students studying dissected anatomical specimens were subjected to either a loosely‐guided, self‐directed learning environment or a strictly‐guided, preformatted gross anatomy laboratory session. The current study's guiding questions were: (1) do strictly‐guided gross anatomy laboratory sessions lead to higher learning gains than loosely‐guided experiences? and (2) are there differences in the recall of anatomical knowledge between students who undergo the two types of laboratory sessions after weeks and months? The design was a randomized controlled trial. The participants were 360 second‐year medical students attending a gross anatomy laboratory course on the anatomy of the hand. Half of the students, the experimental group, were subjected without prior warning to station‐based laboratory sessions; the other half, the control group, to loosely‐guided laboratory sessions, which was the course's prevailing educational method at the time. The recall of anatomical knowledge was measured by written reproduction of 12 anatomical names at four points in time: immediately after the laboratory experience, then one week, five weeks, and eight months later. The strictly‐guided group scored higher than the loosely‐guided group at all time‐points. Repeated ANOVA showed no interaction between the results of the two types of laboratory sessions (P = 0.121) and a significant between‐subject effect (P ≤ 0.001). Therefore, levels of anatomical knowledge retrieved were significantly higher for the strictly‐guided group than for the loosely‐guided group at all times. It was concluded that gross anatomy laboratory sessions with strict instructions resulted in the recall of a larger amount of anatomical knowledge, even after eight months. Anat Sci Educ. © 2012 American Association of Anatomists.     

“Trust Me,I’m a Scientist”

Science & Education - Modern democratic societies tend to appeal to the authority of science when dealing with important challenges and solving their problems. Nevertheless, distrust in science...     

Exploring and explaining the effects of being inspected

This study looks into the effects of school inspection in the context of Flemish education. Respondents in five primary case schools were interviewed before inspection, immediately after inspection and four months later (totalling 45 interviews with 15 respondents). Our results indicate that the inspection incites reflection amongst school staff on the quality of their education before the inspection takes place, but the inspection itself does not provide substantial new insights in the schools’ strengths or weaknesses. The inspection judgement strongly affects the response of school towards the inspection. The case schools with a positive inspection report take practically no concrete action for improvement in the four months after inspection, while a more active response is seen in a school with a less favourable inspection report. The article also discusses the impact of some of the particularities of the Flemish education context on the effects of inspection.     

Moving the Achievement Goal Approach One Step Forward: Toward a Systematic Examination of the Autonomous and Controlled Reasons Underlying Achievement Goals

An important recent development in the achievement goal literature is to define achievement goals strictly as aims. In this overview, we argue that this restrictive definition of achievement goals paves the way for a systematic consideration of the autonomous and controlled reasons underlying individuals’ achievement goals, a distinction central to self-determination theory. To stimulate work in this area, we formulated five propositions, arguing that consideration of the “why” (i.e., type of reasons) in addition to the “what” (i.e., type of aims) of achievement goals (a) provides an account for the regulatory basis of achievement goals, (b) opens the door for other motivation theories to be linked to the achievement goal literature, (c) matters in terms of predicting outcomes, (d) allows for a richer account of contextual forces influencing motivation, and (e) sets the stage for an enriched hierarchical model of achievement motivation. In closing, we discuss various future research directions.