Identifying,Characterising and Assessing New Practices in Doctoral Education

Traditionally, European doctoral education has principally taken place within the binary relationship of professors and their doctoral students according to the apprenticeship model. However, in the last one to two decades, this model has been questioned. Governments and higher education institutions (HEIs) reform doctoral education by establishing and running structured doctoral programmes or Doctoral Schools. Inspired by American Graduate Schools, various forms of Doctoral Schools have been increasingly emerging in many European HEIs. This article identifies, characterises and critically assesses the principal changes in doctoral education practices introduced through Doctoral Schools on the basis of eight case studies carried out in Swiss and Norwegian HEIs. The empirical analysis results in the identification of six types of changes which concern doctoral students’ recruitment, curricular component, supervision, scientific exchange, tracking and their career. These changes lead to four kind of trends – which vary according to the case study – consisting of a structuring, standardisation and opening of doctoral education, whereas its academic character is maintained. If greater competitiveness, better scientific quality and higher graduating rates may be achieved, problems in terms of ‘brain drain’, workload, supervision, innovation and careers may even be reinforced or at least not completely solved.     

Universities’ Autonomy in Times of Changing Higher Education Governance: A study of the Swiss academic labour market

Although eternally debated, the issue of autonomy in higher education is rarely analysed in its complexity. To address this issue, this article uses an analytical matrix which combines the distinction between substantive and procedural autonomy and the distinction between HEI governing bodies, academic professions and individual academics. This framework allows for analysing—by the example of the Swiss academic labour market—how changes in national steering can lead to the redistribution of autonomy between the mentioned actors. Further insights relate to the observed higher education system’s decentralised character. Empirical findings—based on the examination of three special programmes initiated by the federal government—indicate that HEI actors lose some substantive autonomy in favour of the Confederation, and—against the general tendency induced by New Public Management to reinforce HEI governing bodies—procedural autonomy is rather redistributed to individual academics and academic professions.     

Testing the functionality of peripheral vision in a mixed-methods football field study

ABSTRACT

In team sports, peripheral vision might be useful to simultaneously monitor movements of opponents and teammates. Until now, however, little is known about the perceptual-cognitive processes underlying peripheral vision in a sporting task. Therefore, we used a mixed-methods approach with in-situ decision making (3 vs. 3 situations) and retrospective verbal reports to identify perceptual strategies used for optimal information pick-up in high- and low-skilled football players. Our results show that the use of peripheral vision by central defenders depends on the position of the ball and the position of the direct opponent. Players were shown to either use a pivot strategy, whereby they frequently look at the direct opponent if he is not in the possession of the ball in addition to making saccades to monitor other players, or they employ a more direct strategy, in which gaze is anchored on this location, avoiding saccades and monitoring the other players with peripheral vision. Based on our findings we make recommendations about how these gaze strategies can be further tested in future research and how sports practice can benefit from these results.     

New organisational structures and the transformation of academic work

This article will particularly focus on Norway and the consequences for academic work. Frequently in studies of academic work, focus has been on academics’ individual autonomy and to what extent the latter is challenged (Altbach in Ann Am Acad Pol Soc Sci 448:1–14, 1980; Shattock in High Educ 41:27–47, 2001). One of the shortcomings in literature dealing with academic workplace is lack of attention paid to the emerging division of work generated by an increasing differentiation of the academic profession (Musselin in Knowledge Matters, The public mission of the research university, 2011). In order to better address complexities and dynamics that surround academic work, the article will in particular examine whether academic work is subject to an increasing specialization and collectivization. In our attempt to observe changes in the practices of academic work, particular interest is given to “how the organization of an academic enterprise affects academic work” (Blau in The organization of academic work. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 1994:8). Inspired by organizational theorists such as Brunsson and Olsen in The reforming organization. Brunsson and Olsen (The reforming organization. Fagbokforlaget, Bergen, 1997) we also want to attend to the relations between organizational change and academic work. Here we address the relationship between formal organization and informal organization which is likely to develop as decoupled structures—one adapted to institutionalized norms of society and the other for coordinating activities. Furthermore, there are tendencies suggesting that universities are becoming less special as an organization (Musselin in Key challenges to the academic profession. INCHER-Kassel, Paris, 2007) and converge to more general organizational characteristics by constructing dimensions of organizations such as identity, hierarchy and rationality (Brunsson and Sahlin-Andersson in Constructing organizations: the example of public sector reform, Organization Stud 21:4, 2000). In this article we are mainly interested in how hierarchy is constructed enabling coordination by an “authoritative centre” (Brunsson and Sahlin-Andersson in Constructing organizations: the example of public sector reform, Organization Stud 21:4, 2000:726) and how it interferes with traditional forms of organizing the university. This calls for a concern to whether the specificity of academic work, built of the mainly individual exercise of a large diversity of tasks, remains a key characteristic for organizing academic activities at universities. Empirically this article studies changes in academic work regarding new patterns in organizing research funding and doctoral education in Norway that emerged in the last decade. Like in other European countries, new policies for research funding and doctoral education have led to the creation of new organisational structures within Norwegian HEIs, namely research centres and doctoral schools.     

Intra-day and inter-day reliability of heart rate variability measurement

Abstract

At present, analysis of heart rate variability (HRV) is becoming widely used as a clinical or research tool. Supported reliability studies for HRV measurement are, however, still limited. The main purpose was to perform an assessment of the absolute and relative reliability of HRV parameters from short-term recordings by means of orthoclinostatic stimulation and to investigate, whether there is a difference in repeating the retest immediately or after several days. The study group consisted of 99 participants (mean age 22 ± 1.24 years). Standard HRV indexes were computed: PT (total spectral power), PHF (high frequency spectral power), PLF (low frequency spectral power) and LF/HF. Absolute reliability was assessed by the standard error of measurement and 95% limits of agreement; relative reliability was assessed by the intraclass correlation coefficient. There was also an estimate of the sample size needed to detect the mean difference ≥ 30% of the between-subject standard deviation. In conclusion, a large random variation (within individuals) of HRV parameters was revealed, regardless of whether the retest was repeated immediately or with an interruption. For most HRV parameters (particularly in the immediately repeated test-retest), however, random variation represents a limited portion of the between-subject variability.     

BMI group-related differences in physical fitness and physical activity in preschool-age children: a cross-sectional analysis

In the Ballabeina study, we investigated age- and BMI-group-related differences in aerobic fitness (20 m shuttle run), agility (obstacle course), dynamic (balance beam) and static balance (balance platform), and physical activity (PA, accelerometers) in 613 children (M age = 5.1 years, SD = 0.6). Normal weight (NW) children performed better than overweight (OW) children in aerobic fitness, agility, and dynamic balance (all p <.001), while OWchildren had a better static balance (p < .001). BMI-group-related differences in aerobic fitness and agility were larger in older children (p for interaction with age = .01) in favor of the NW children. PA did not differ between NW and OW (p > or = .1), but did differ between NW and obese children (p < .05). BMI-group-related differences in physical fitness can already be present in preschool-age children.