Predicting multicultural effectiveness of international students: the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire

The present study considered the reliability and validity of the 78-item revised version of the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire, a multidimensional instrument aimed at measuring multicultural effectiveness of expatriate employees and students. The questionnaire includes scales for cultural empathy, open-mindedness, emotional stability, social initiative and flexibility. Participants were native and foreign students of an international business school (N=171) in the Netherlands. The MPQ scales appeared to be more strongly predictive of adjustment of international students as compared to native students. Moreover, the instrument was able to explain variance in students’ adjustment beyond self-efficacy.     

Can cities shape socio-technical transitions and how would we know if they were?

This paper asks two - relatively simple - questions: can cities shape socio-technical transitions? And how would we know if they were? There are three key objectives. The first of these is to set out emerging, and in our view, convincing evidence, that large world cities have political aspirations to develop purposive and managed change in the socio-technical organisation of infrastructure networks that can be characterised as ‘systemic’ transitions. The second objective is conceptual in orientation and seeks to address how we understand transitions at the scale of the city, the role of ‘the city’ in undertaking transitions, and review both the strengths and shortcomings of the multi-level perspective (MLP) on socio-technical transitions in addressing this. The third objective is to identify what an urban transition would look like, and then constructs a new framework to conceptualise and research urban transitions. The paper then summarises the key aspects and implications of our argument.     

The Impact of Institutional Context,Education and Labour Market Policies on Early School Leaving: a comparative analysis of EU countries

This article presents a comparative analysis of the determinants of early school leaving (ESL) at the country level. We decompose ESL rates into two components: a ‘primary’ rate reflecting unqualified school leaving from initial education, and a second component accounting for early school leavers who participate in training programmes. Both may be influenced by structural and policy determinants. We examine how the ESL rate is affected by macro-economic and social context variables such as GDP/capita, growth, poverty, and youth unemployment, as well as system characteristics of the education system (such as legal school leaving age, grade retention, early tracking, and size of vocational education) and the labour market and social protection systems (minimum wages, unemployment insurance).     

Does regular online testing enhance student learning in the numerical sciences? Robust evidence from a large data set

While a number of studies have been conducted on the impact of online assessment and teaching methods on student learning, the field does not seem settled around the promised benefits of such approaches. It is argued that the reason for this state of affairs is that few studies have been able to control for a number of confounding factors in student performance. We report on the introduction of a regular (every 3 weeks) low-mark online assessment tool in a large, first-year business mathematics course at the University of New South Wales, a major Australian university. Using a retrospective regression methodology together with a very large and rich data set, we test the proposition that exposure to the online assessment instrument enhances student learning. Significantly, we are able to control for prior student aptitude, in-course mastery, gender and even effort via a voluntary class attendance proxy. Furthermore, the study incorporates two large, and statistically diverse cohorts as well as manipulations in the model tested to robustly examine the outcomes. Our central result is that higher exposure to the online instrument robustly leads to higher student learning, all else being equal. Various implications for online assessment design, implementation and targeting are also discussed.     

Globalization and the freedom of knowledge

This article considers the transmission of knowledge in higher education. It takes the metaphor of the music industry that pre‐selects the music people can buy. The sales potential is the leading principle in the selection process. Often the small producer is excluded because his or her music is not of commercial interest. The end‐customer does not know what he or she is missing because he or she has never heard the music. It is to be feared that a similar market principle will also influence the selection of knowledge and affect the capacity of higher education institutions to freely generate and transmit new knowledge. The globalization of higher education risks homogenizing the cultural traditions of the non‐Western world through a process of Western cultural domination. On the other hand, the Internet, via open source software like LINUX, might serve to democratize higher education and allow greater grassroots input.     

School students’ confidence when answering diagnostic questions online

Educational Studies in Mathematics - In this paper, we analyse a large, opportunistic dataset of responses (N = 219,826) to online, diagnostic multiple-choice mathematics questions, provided by...     

The University Experiences of Students with Learning Disabilities

To explore the university experiences of students with learning disabilities (LD), 63,802 responses to the 2014 Student Experience in the Research University Survey were analyzed. Compared to other students, those with self‐reported LD (5.96 percent) had difficulty with assignments and had more obstacles caused by nonacademic responsibilities and imposed by their skill levels. Students with self‐reported LD sensed more bias toward people with disabilities on campus, and they were less satisfied with their overall experience. Interactions between disability status and age suggested even more challenges for older students who self‐reported LD. Approximately one‐third of students who self‐reported LD received accommodations. The rate of accommodations was higher among individuals who were wealthy, who lived alone, and who were out‐of‐state students. Compared to students who self‐reported LD but reported no accommodations, those with accommodations had more contact with faculty and less difficulty with assignments.     

Early Cerebral Constraints on Reading Skills in School‐Age Children: An MRI Study

Reading relies on a left‐lateralized network of brain areas that include the pre‐lexical processing regions of the ventral stream. Specifically, a region in the left lateral occipitotemporal sulcus (OTS) is consistently more activated for visual presentations of words than for other categories of stimuli. This region undergoes dramatic changes at the functional and structural levels when children learn to read, but little is known about the effects of early cerebral constraints on reading skills. Using anatomical magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated whether the sulcal pattern of the lateral OTS—a stable brain feature—was associated with oral reading skills. The sulcal pattern of the left but not the right lateral OTS was associated with the number of words correctly read in 3 min. This study is the first to evidence that reading is affected by early cerebral constraints, such as the sulcal morphology of the left lateral OTS.     

Cost-effectiveness of audiovisual media in higher education

In general, economists are engaged in optimizing the ratio between benefits and costs. The so-called cost-effectiveness approach is oriented towards producing specified effects at the lowest costs. How this may be done for audiovisual media in higher education is shown in two steps. First, the function-identifying stage, then the cost-analysis stage. The cost-structures of seven methods of delivering instructional television are then compared. Finally, some reasons are given for why cost-effectiveness considerations are still rarely applied in educational decision-making. Structural measures to remedy this state of affairs are proposed.Detailed cost calculations which support the ideas put forward in this article were to have been included in an appendix: this can be obtained from the author.