Interactive Television (ITV) Instructor Behaviors: Implications of Frequency and Importance

Two hundred students majoring in education responded to the Validation of Effective Behaviors of Distance Instructors Inventory (McKenzie, Kirby, & Mims, 1997). The 41 items measured two dimensions: frequency and importance of effective behaviors in delivering distance instruction. A two-way within-subjects ANOVA was conducted. Of the 41 items, 14 were rated higher in importance than in frequency. The 14 items were then analyzed using Principal Component Analysis with Varimax rotation, which yielded two factors: Effective Learning Methods and Student Guidance. This study suggests that the behaviors of Interactive Television (ITV) instructors may be lacking in these two important factors.     

Applying the tourist area life cycle within sport tourism: the case of Stellenbosch and German athletes

The popular tourist town of Stellenbosch in South Africa has long been a favoured training destination for European athletes during the northern hemisphere winter months. This paper considers the case study of German athletes – one of the most prominent groups to train in Stellenbosch since the early 1990s. The analysis involves the application of the concept of the Tourist Area Life Cycle (TALC) to the town’s sport tourism offering. In this regard Stellenbosch continues to experience notable demographic changes, not all of which are related to tourism. The impact of these changes is considered in the context of the factors which have historically made the town a sought-after destination for high performance athletics training camps. Consequently this paper offers an analysis of Stellenbosch’s current and future attractiveness as far as this particular dimension of sport tourism is concerned. This is an important consideration given the availability of alternative training destinations both in South Africa and internationally.     

Ambivalent occupational identities under modern workplace demands: the case of Swiss retail apprentices

This article investigates how Swiss retail apprentices construct their occupational identities under modern workplace affordances. The Swiss retail sector has become more competitive in recent decades; as a consequence, retail businesses look for skilled and responsible employees who are flexible in regard to work tasks and schedules. The article focuses on apprentices’ experiences and sense-making, and specifically examines how retail work conditions not only generate pressure and insecurity, but also offer possibilities for personal identification. Results are based on a qualitative study with retail apprentices involving interviews, focus groups, and observations in vocational education and training schools. Retail apprentices strongly identify with the skilled nature of retail work and even the demand for continuous skill development to ensure that they remain employable. However, they are more critical of the flexible way in which their work is organised and develop divided sense-makings around the demands for responsible autonomy. In short, retail work is perceived in ambivalent ways, oscillating between valorising some of the realities of retail work and suffering from others. The discussion points to the kinds of working and learning conditions within companies that hinder apprentices’ ability to cope with the demands of the modern retail workplace.     

Learning opportunities in the outdoor school–empirical findings on outdoor school in Germany from the children’s perspective

This article examines learning processes and learning opportunities in the outdoor school based on 13 focus-group interviews with children (ages 8–9) at three German elementary schools. For 1 year, cross-curricular teaching had taken place once a week outside the classroom—in natural settings, at cultural sites or on school grounds. The article discusses the learning potential of the outdoor school in terms of activities that the children perceive as dominant, i.e. playing, moving and social cooperation. It will discuss and reflect upon the learning opportunities that arise as well as on the limitations of learning in out-of-school settings and the role of learning in the children’s perception. The study reveals that the outdoor school as a place of teaching, play, exploration and experience offers formal and informal learning opportunities and encourages children to engage among themselves and within their social and inanimate surroundings by challenging them physically, cognitively, perceptually and socially. Learning processes initiated through play, activity and social cooperation are often not perceived by the children as ‘learning’ in the formal sense. Apparently, a significant proportion of the outdoor school’s potential lies in the combination of teacher-structured and informal learning processes that arise spontaneously.     

What is meant by inclusion? An analysis of European and North American journal articles with high impact

The purpose of this review is to further our knowledge about what is meant by inclusion in research addressing the topic. While it is common to remark that inclusion is defined in different ways in research, few attempts have been made to map and analyse different types of definitions and whether there are patterns to be find in how the concept is used. The 30 most cited journal articles from a North American and a European research arena were selected for analysis. Each article was analysed in relation to genre, theoretical tradition and inclusion concept used. The review yielded several important results. To name a few, a divide was identified between position articles, with developed discussions about and analyses of the meaning of inclusion, and empirical articles, where inclusion signifies that children with disabilities are placed in the mainstream. In addition, writing within a critical theoretical tradition was much more common among positional papers. Further, both arenas are dominated by Anglo-Saxon researchers. It is argued that the conceptual confusion characterising the field impedes its development.     

Physical discipline and children's adjustment: cultural normativeness as a moderator

Interviews were conducted with 336 mother-child dyads (children's ages ranged from 6 to 17 years; mothers' ages ranged from 20 to 59 years) in China, India, Italy, Kenya, the Philippines, and Thailand to examine whether normativeness of physical discipline moderates the link between mothers' use of physical discipline and children's adjustment. Multilevel regression analyses revealed that physical discipline was less strongly associated with adverse child outcomes in conditions of greater perceived normativeness, but physical discipline was also associated with more adverse outcomes regardless of its perceived normativeness. Countries with the lowest use of physical discipline showed the strongest association between mothers' use and children's behavior problems, but in all countries higher use of physical discipline was associated with more aggression and anxiety.     

Charter school authorizers and student achievement

In this paper we analyze the relationship between charter school authorizers and student achievement. We perform this analysis using a 10-year panel dataset from Minnesota, a state that permits four distinct types of authorizers—local school boards, postsecondary institutions, nonprofit organizations, and the Minnesota Department of Education. The results of the analysis indicate that there is no statistically significant relationship between charter school authorizing type and mean levels of student achievement. However, the analysis also reveals that schools authorized by nonprofit organizations exhibit substantially more variability in achievement than schools authorized by local school boards.     

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).     

A Proposal for State,Income-Targeted,Preschool Vouchers

This article proposes that states create low-income targeted voucher programs for 3- and/or 4-year-olds. The basis for this proposal is considerable research demonstrating long-term effects for a number of random assignment and quasi-experimental preschool programs. Benefit–costs rates of return for these programs are between $2 and $16 for every dollar invested. These results are also consistent with developmental and neuro-biological studies supporting early childhood interventions. Other research shows that low-income students are less likely to be in preschool, and if they are, they are more likely to receive low-quality services. Taken together, and to control costs, I propose an income-targeted program. I argue for vouchers based on improved equal opportunity and higher efficiency in the delivery of preschool services. Design details are generally to be the province of state decision makers. My one caveat is that it seems to make sense to require programs, at least for 4-year-olds, to be center based.     

Reading Strategies in Children with Cerebral Visual Impairment caused by Periventricular Leukomalacia

Four children with cerebral visual impairment caused by periventricular leukomalacia were followed in an ethnographic clinical case study for two years during their process of learning to read in mainstream classes. When compared to children with ocular visual impairment, children with cerebral visual impairment often exhibit an uneven cognitive profile with visuo-spatial deficits but good verbal capacities. One main problem for children with deficits due to periventricular leukomalacia is decreased visual acuity with crowding, that is, an inability to identify symbols in a line, while single symbols of the same size may be identified. A question addressed in the study is what kind of strategies does the child with "crowding" problems develop in reading long words in print. Could Braille, as a sequential reading medium, be an alternative for the child with simultaneous visual problems? Two children were offered both Braille and print reading as reading media, one of whom preferred Braille after two years of training. The other two children read ordinary print without any special teaching. After two years, considerable differences in reading acquisition and reading strategies could be detected among the four children. No single factor seemed to account for the differences. Individual factors as well as teaching methods could be reasons for the differences.