The emerging fourth tier in K-12 education finance in British Columbia,Canada: increasing privatisation and implications for social justice

This paper examines increasing privatisation of education in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Conceptually, the paper is informed by theories of privatisation and social justice; and methodologically, it uses policy analysis to examine documents and financial records obtained from government departments. The paper critically analyses education policy that has enabled the emergence of private sources of revenue (tuition fees and for-profit revenue) and the establishment of school and programme choice. Analysis of levels of international student tuition generated by school districts in the province reveals differential capacity to produce such revenue. The authors argue that this differential capacity is leading to the development of a fourth tier within a pre-existing three-tier K-12 education system in British Columbia. The article concludes with a discussion of implications related to social justice in education.     

Creating sustainable societies: developing emerging professionals through transforming current mindsets

Future professionals will bear the brunt of creating sustainable societies. Equipping them for the task is the challenge of current educators. Educational experiences facilitating the development of sustainable habits of mind are needed. This research reports on the experiences of developing scientists and engineers engaged in a sustainable energy research program. Its focus is the learners’ changing conceptions about sustainability and their role in creating sustainable societies. It is an exploratory, multi-strand, case-oriented study, utilizing mixed methods to analyze qualitative and quantitative data. The research was grounded in the literature of education for sustainability and situated learning in communities, highlighting the common threads supporting the development of a new generation of scientists and engineers with sustainable mindsets. Findings indicated learners’ concepts of sustainability were broadened from narrow, discipline-specific definitions to an understanding of sustainability as a multidisciplinary field. Learners’ developing identities from budding scientists and engineers to citizens invested in and capable of creating sustainable societies is discussed. The development of learning communities was an integral mechanism for facilitating perspective changes; however, field trips and seminars focused on exploring sustainability were identified as key influences in developing multifaceted and more complex conceptions of sustainability.     

Mentoring “Inside” and “Outside” the Action of Teaching: A Professional Framework for Mentoring

This study seeks to contribute to the research on mentored induction by investigating the practices mentors employ in their work with new teachers in two high-need, high-poverty urban elementary schools. Informed by Schwille’s (2008) temporal framework of “educative” mentoring practices occurring “inside” and “outside” the action of teaching, this study investigated the range of practices mentors employed, new teachers’ perceptions of the practices, and if the practices contributed to new teachers’ professional learning. Participants included six new teachers and two induction mentors. Results indicate that “inside” and “outside” mentoring practices are complementary and should be conceived as assisted performance and judiciously selected to promote productive changes in new teachers’ practice. Recommendations for mentoring programs are provided.     

Assessing the relative performance of U.K. university technology transfer offices: parametric and non-parametric evidence

We present evidence on the relative performance of U.K. university technology transfer offices (TTOs) using data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier estimation (SFE). U.K. TTOs are found to exhibit low-levels of absolute efficiency. There also appear to be decreasing returns to scale, implying that TTOs may need to be reconfigured into smaller units. The development of regionally-based sector focused TTOs is also advised. Consistent with qualitative evidence from U.S. TTOs, we find that there is a need to upgrade the business skills and capabilities of U.K. TTO managers and licensing officers.     

How Two- and Four-Year-Old Children Interpret Adjectives and Count Nouns

We examined the role of object kind familiarity (i.e., knowledge of a count noun for an object) on preschoolers' sensitivity to the relation between a novel word's form class (adjective or count noun) and its reference (to a material kind-property or to an object kind). We used a forced-choice match-to-target task, in which children learned a word for one object (e.g., a metal cup), and then chose between 2 other objects. One was from the same object kind but a different material kind (with different related properties, such as color and texture; e.g., a white plastic cup); the other was from a different object kind but the same material kind (with the same related properties; e.g., a metal spoon). In Experiment 1, children learned either a count noun (e.g., "This is a zav") or an adjective (e.g., "This is a zav one"). Within each form class, we crossed the familiarity of the referent object kind (familiar and unfamiliar) with the age of the children (2- and 4-year-olds). The principal finding was that in interpreting an adjective, 4-year-olds were more likely to choose the object sharing material kind with the target if the target was familiar than if it was unfamiliar. No such familiarity effect was evident among 2-year-olds. In Experiment 2, we employed a more unambiguously adjectival frame (e.g., "This is a very zav-ish one"), and replicated the results of Experiment 1. We interpret the results in terms of 2 proposed word learning biases: one that learners initially expect any word applied to an unfamiliar object to refer to a (basic-level) kind of object, and a second that learners prefer words to contrast in meaning. We consider several interpretations of the observed age difference.     

The Nominal Group Technique: extending the evaluation of students' teaching and learning experiences

Obtaining and evaluating student opinion about their teaching and learning experiences can, if taken seriously, be a complex process. There are not many approaches available for student evaluations, and there has in our view, been an over dependence on course evaluation questionnaires. The Nominal Group Technique (NGT) is a less widely used approach, which this paper argues provides a potential way of extending the evaluation of students' experiences of courses. The paper specifically considers the use of the NGT in the context of an evaluation of the first three cohorts of students on a new degree course. The strengths and weaknesses of the approach as they have emerged in this evaluation are considered. Attention is also paid to evidence concerning the use of the NGT in other contexts. The paper concludes that the NGT has much to offer within the portfolio of student evaluation methods currently being used in higher education. Its particular strengths are assessed in relation to certain possible shortcomings, and its usefulness is considered in relation to various possible contexts. The arguments are illustrated by data taken from our current evaluation study.     

Assessing the self‐esteem of female undergraduate students: an issue of methodology

For many students, embarking on higher education can pose particular threats and challenges, not only to academic identity, but also to fundamental, personal aspects of the self. This paper reports a methodological study that employed quantitative and qualitative research methods to explore the impact on the sense of self and self‐esteem of a group of female first‐year undergraduates. Results from a Self‐esteem inventory, a variation on Q Methodology, an Ideal‐self inventory and a semi‐structured interview revealed different but complementary aspects of the self and indicated that participants’ self‐esteem increased over the duration of the study, as recorded on all four measures. It is suggested that the most appropriate way of uncovering and understanding mediators of self‐esteem may be through a mixed‐method approach.     

Developmental Attainment of Infants and Young Children with Down Syndrome

INFANTS and young children with Down syndrome who were living at home and attending exemplary early intervention programs were assessed by trained examiners in the five domains of the Battelle Developmental Inventory. Data was compared to the 50th percentile attainment and found that infants and young children with Down syndrome are more similar to other children in Personal Social and Adaptive Domains and less similar in Communication and Cognitive Domains. These differences begin to show more dramatically as the child reaches the age of 36 months. The older the child the greater the measured differences. Documenting and understanding this uneven developmental path is significant in program planning.     

The Scaling of Mixed-Item-Format Tests With the One-Parameter and Two-Parameter Partial Credit Models

Item response theory scalings were conducted for six tests with mixed item formats. These tests differed in their proportions of constructed response (c.r.) and multiple choice (m.c.) items and in overall difficulty. The scalings included those based on scores for the c.r. items that had maintained the number of levels as the item rubrics, either produced from single ratings or multiple ratings that were averaged and rounded to the nearest integer, as well as scalings for a single form of c.r. items obtained by summing multiple ratings. A one-parameter (IPPC) or two-parameter (2PPC) partial credit model was used for the c.r. items and the one-parameter logistic (IPL) or three-parameter logistic (3PL) model for the m.c. items, ltem fit was substantially worse with the combination IPL/IPPC model than the 3PL/2PPC model due to the former's restrictive assumptions that there would be no guessing on the m.c. items and equal item discrimination across items and item types. The presence of varying item discriminations resulted in the IPL/IPPC model producing estimates of item information that could be spuriously inflated for c.r. items that had three or more score levels. Information for some items with summed ratings were usually overestimated by 300% or more for the IPL/IPPC model. These inflated information values resulted in under-estbnated standard errors of ability estimates. The constraints posed by the restricted model suggests limitations on the testing contexts in which the IPL/IPPC model can be accurately applied.