Samuel Bowles,Herbert Gintis and Diane Ravitch: a classic controversy in education revisited

Two important books in the field of US education, Samuel Bowles & Herbert Gintis's Schooling in Capitalist America and Diane Ravitch's Revisionists Revised, are reviewed. The author contends that the dynamic tension in the debate on US education that existed in the late 1970s when these two books were published has virtually disappeared from the mainstream of educational thought. After more than a decade of conservative national leadership the mainstream debate on educational reform has centered on more technical and institutional issues and away from the fundamental philosophical debate over the role of schools in US society. The radical analysis informed by Marxism which Bowles & Gintis employed has been essentially eliminated from the mainstream of educational thought, while the conservative‐to‐liberal analyses have moved to the right politically. Diane Ravitch has continued to be a force in this debate; she is currently a US Assistant Secretary of Education. The author examines Ravitch's response to the radical critique represented by Bowles & Gintis and argues that without the latter's challenges to conventional reason, liberal educational thought will become increasingly conservative, sterile and reactionary. No salutary dialogue can emerge from parties (i.e. US conservative and liberal thought) who share similar basic assumptions about the nature of society and education.     

Opening the ivory tower's door: An analysis of the determinants of the formation of U.S. university spin-off companies

This paper presents findings from an analysis of the determinants of the formation of university spin-off companies within the university's research park. We find that university spin-off companies are a greater proportion of the companies in older parks and in parks that are associated with richer university research environments. We also find that university spin-off companies are a larger proportion of companies in parks that are geographically closer to their university and in parks that have a biotechnology focus.     

The descent of words: evolutionary thinking 1780-1880

Histories of evolutionary thought are dominated by organic evolution. The colossus in our midst that is evolutionary biology casts its shadow over history, making it appear that what is so widespread and important today was always the primary subject of evolutionary speculation. Thus many histories assume that the core meaning of evolution is the change of organic life and that other forms of evolutionary thinking, such as linguistic, social or cultural evolution, are only analogies or offshoots of the main biological evolutionary trunk. Ironically this is an ahistorical understanding. Long before the work of Charles Darwin, scholars were independently developing evolutionary concepts such as descent with modification and divergence from a common stock in order to understand cultural change.     

Identifying Barriers to Self‐employment: The Development and Validation of the Barriers to Entrepreneurship Success Tool

ABSTRACT The present study sought to add to our knowledge about forces that negatively affect an individual's decision to start a business by identifying barriers they encounter. By identifying barriers to starting a business, we stand to learn much about how an individual identifies, confronts, and responds to decisions which may seem to be beyond their control. Such data will be instrumental in developing practical applications for helpingindividuals overcome unresolved barriers that potentially prevent them from starting a business. An instrument was developed utilizing factor analysis and yielded a six‐barrier construct. The barriers identified in this study were: lack of confidence, personal problems, lack of skills, start‐up logistics, financial needs and time constraints. In addition, the instrument was also administered to a test group of new entrepreneurs participating in a training program to determine pre‐ and post‐test intervention effects. The study concludes with suggestions for further development of the BEST tool as well as practical applications for program planners.     

Temporal Contingency as an Independent Component of Parenting Behavior

Several theoretical conceptions emphasize the importance of prompt responses to infant's signals in providing them with early causal experiences. The present paper examines if a maternal tendency toward prompt responses can be identified by distributional analyses of maternal response latencies and if this response tendency can be shown for different communicative channels (in verbal/vocal, nonverbal, intermodal communication). In addition, the paper focuses on the relation between the temporal contingency of maternal behavior and measures of maternal interactional quality. Interactional sequences of 54 mother and 3-month-old infant dyads were analyzed using microanalytical assessment techniques and ratings of interactional quality. Distributional analyses of maternal expressions during face-to-face encounters revealed that promptness of responses toward infant signals with a short latency is a typical response tendency in maternal behavior. There are, however, individual differences between mothers, indicating that this response tendency is expressed in different communicative channels by individual mothers. This is shown by low correlations between the contingency indices of different communicative channels. The relation between contingency and rated indicators of interactional quality turned out to be rather small, indicating that maternal contingency may be conceptualized to contribute an independent factor to the quality of maternal interactional behavior.     

The deconstructed journal — a new model for academic publishing

The limitations of existing proposed and operational publishing models intended to replace the academic journal are briefly reviewed. Three ‘insights’ are described, the first is into the ‘means/end’ confusion of much current net-based publishing activity, the second is that it is the purpose, not the form, that is the important aspect of the traditional academic journal model, and the third is that satisfactory net-based publishing models need not contain a central publisher. From this new viewpoint is developed the Deconstructed Journal (DJ) model which it is suggested is a better model for network based academic publishing. It also solves some of the problems of the current model. Although the main focus of the DJ model is the replacement of the STM journal it has implications for all areas of academic journal publishing.     

Software for managing complex learning: Examples from an educational psychology course

Inquiry-based instruction including problem-, project-, and case-based methods often incorporate complex sets of learning activities. The numerous activities run the risk of becoming disconnected in the minds of learners and teachers. STAR.Legacy is a software shell that can help designers organize learning activities into an inquiry cycle that is easy to understand and pedagogically sound. To ensure that classroom teachers can adapt the inquiry activities according to their local resources and needs, STAR.Legacy was built upon four types of design principles: learner centered, knowledge centered, assessment centered, and community centered. We describe how a STAR.Legacy constructed for an educational psychology course helped preservice teachers design and learn about effective inquiry-based instruction. This work was supported by grant #R305F60090 from the Department of Education. The authors thank the educational psychology students for their contributions to this paper and Amy Ryce for her editorial talents.