Prevention,Management, and Moderation: Ethical Frameworks of Governance

This article seeks to analyse and draft an ethical framework of governance in the area of higher education and science. To this end, a distinction is made between ethical challenges as such, and preventive measures and remedies. An outline of ethical challenges to both higher education and science and governance is provided, addressing the quest for knowledge; conflicts with dignity and violations of academic equality; and failures in policing, responsiveness, and the balancing of aspirations. This outline is followed by proposed remedial or preventive ethical frameworks of governance, namely the cultural integration of governance and ethics, and the management of ethics and risk prevention.     

The politics of PISA: The media,policy and public responses in Norway and England

Using the PISA 2015 releases in Norway and England, this article explores how PISA has been presented in the media and how the policy level has responded to the results. England will be used as an example for comparison. The article presents early media responses from the 20 most circulated daily newspapers in the two countries and discusses them in relation both to the national PISA reports in Norway and England, as well as the international report of the OECD. The media responses are further interpreted in light of previous research in both countries, with a particular focus upon Norway, where previous Ministers of Education have been interviewed about assessment policy and education reforms.     

Bridging knowledge: A collective undergraduate thesis development approach

While there are various approaches to gerontological and geriatrics (and social sciences) education globally, a component commonly included in undergraduate education is a final thesis project. In Turkey, the Department of Gerontology at Akdeniz University has undertaken a unique approach to thesis development that values and draws on accessing the greater expertise and knowledge of faculty and students through joint collaborations. We offer an overview of the eleven stages of a collective thesis development approach as an alternative to the conventional way of conducting oversight of undergraduate thesis projects. With four years of experience, observed benefits of a collective thesis development approach for students include the opportunity to draw on the comradery, insights, and experience of a plurality of educators and aspiring students while developing, executing, and documenting a thesis project. Benefits to advisors/educators include profiting from the strengths in other advisors and wider exposure to current research, findings, and methodological approaches. So while there may be multifold variations in curriculum content and educational approaches, it is of great importance that educators create “spaces” that give value to and foster the pursuit of collective wisdom through joint collaborations. (188 words)     

Mothers’ Implicit and Explicit Attitudes and Attributions in Relation to Self-Reported Parenting Behavior

Objective. Parenting behavior is presumed to be related to the thoughts about child behavior that parents report in a controlled and explicit manner and to more implicit parent cognitions that occur outside of conscious awareness and are less accessible to verbal report. Design. We examined mothers’ attitudes toward their children as correlates of self-reported parenting behavior. We used a combination of a self-report questionnaire and a reaction-time method (the Implicit Association Test) to assess explicit and implicit attitudes, respectively. We also assessed mothers’ implicit and explicit attributions for child misbehavior in relation to parenting, using a questionnaire measure of attributions completed under high-cognitive load (implicit attributions) or under low-cognitive load (explicit attributions). Mothers of 124, 6- to 10-year-olds (52% male) participated. Results. Attitudes assessed by self-report questionnaire and the Implicit Association Test were uniquely associated with negative parenting. The cognitive load manipulation moderated associations between attributions and parenting, such that child-blaming attributions were inversely associated with positive parenting only under conditions of high-cognitive load. Conclusions. Compared to traditional self-report questionnaires, methods such as the Implicit Association Test or cognitive load manipulations may more effectively assess implicit parent cognitions.     

Kant's two paths of knowledge creation: a priori vs a posteriori

Knowledge Management Research & Practice -     

The effects of a free school choice policy on parents’ school choice behaviour

Recently, European school systems have seen various attempts to ‘modernise’ their governance. Market and competition oriented reforms have not been central to governance innovation strategies in German speaking countries, however, their number and relevance is rising in recent years. A free school choice policy which abolishes “school districts” which legally define fixed school catchment areas was introduced in the school year of 2007/2008 in the Austrian city of Linz.The effects of the implementation of this policy on the primary school sector were studied by a standardised questionnaire administered to a representative sample of 3425 parents of five age groups of primary school children. The return rate was about 55%. By special measures during data collection a satisfactory representation of parents with migrant background was achieved.Three questions are discussed in the paper: (1) Is there a rise in segregation in schools as a result of free choice policy? (2) Is there a change in the composition of the student population in different schools as a result of free choice policy? (3) Is there a change in parent school choice behaviour of as a result of free choice policy?Our data indicates that segregation in primary schools with respect to ethnic and social family characteristics increases after the policy implementation, but the sample size is too small to find significant results. In addition, no significant change is observed in the social composition of schools. In accordance with the previous findings no significant modifications of choice behaviour occur for different ethnic or social groups after free choice. However changes in choice motives can be observed.