The role of the associate dean in UK universities: distributed leadership in action?

This paper reports on findings from a Leadership Foundation for Higher Education funded project exploring the role of associate deans in UK universities. While the number of associate deans leading cross-curricular and inter-disciplinary initiatives appears to be on the increase, there has been very little research focusing on the exact nature of the role and its importance, or otherwise, in the leadership and management of universities. Drawing on mixed-methods data from 15 semi-structured interviews and a follow-up online survey (n = 172), this paper reports on how the role is defined and positioned in relation to university organisational structures and identifies what the similarities and differences are between associate deans working at traditional and modern universities. As the first national survey of the role, it is argued that this paper makes a significant and original contribution to knowledge. By drawing on the concept of distributed leadership, the paper also offers new theoretical insights into how different types of universities in the UK are responding to external pressures as a consequence of the fast-changing and increasingly complex sector environment.     

DETECTING PARENTAL DECEPTION USING A BEHAVIOR RATING SCALE DURING ASSESSMENT OF ATTENTION‐DEFICIT/HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

It is often assumed that parents completing behavior rating scales during the assessment of attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can deliberately manipulate the outcomes of the assessment. To detect these actions, items designed to detect over‐reporting or under‐reporting of results are sometimes embedded in such rating scales. This study presents the results of an experimental study in which parents (a) read a scenario telling them that their hypothetical son's teacher has suggested their son may have ADHD and (b) considered assigned goals for the assessment. Parents then completed the accompanying Conners 3Parent Short form (Conners 3‐P[S]) in a manner that they believed would achieve their assigned goals. Findings showed that parents are able to engage in deception when completing behavior rating scales. The validity scales embedded in the Conners 3‐P(S), however, demonstrated mixed results for detecting parental deception with the Negative Impression validity scale, accurately detecting attempts to malinger in the majority of cases, whereas the Positive Impression validity scale appears to have little to no diagnostic utility for the detection of defensive responding. Clinicians utilizing behavior rating scales should carefully consider results, and nonresults, obtained from embedded validity scales when interpreting parent responses to behavior rating scales as part of an ADHD assessment.     

Exploring Kid Space in the wild: a preliminary study of multimodal and immersive collaborative play-based learning experiences

Educational technology research and development - Parents recognize the potential benefits of technology for their young children but are wary of too much screen time and its potential deficits in...     

Mr. Smiley Blanton on vowel production

The English provinces served as both nursery and gravesite of the “old school” of acting. This school requires the designation “old” because its members—from Kemble, Kean, and Macready at the beginning of the nineteenth century to Phelps, John Ryder, and Barry Sullivan at the end—clung to the heroic ideal of aggrandized reality in the tragic performance, an ideal rooted in eighteenth century stage practice if not earlier.     

Using Student and Institutional Characteristics to Predict Graduation Rates at Community Colleges: New Developments in Performance Measures and Institutional Effectiveness

Prediction models using graduation rate as the performance indicator were obtained for community colleges in California, Florida, and Michigan. The results of this study indicated that institutional graduation rate could be predicted effectively from an aggregate of student and institutional characteristics. A performance measure was computed, the Institutional Performance Ratio (IPR), for each institution to form a metric. This metric was used to measure one institution's performance against another in terms of graduation rate. Based on the IPR value, an institution could determine whether its performance exceeded, met, or was below expectation.     

Affectionate expressions as face‐threatening acts: Receiver assessments

Although expressions of affection may be regarded as a form of support between relational partners, affectionate communication has the potential also to be threatening to senders’ and receivers’ face needs, especially in nonromantic relationships. On the premise that a given communicative act can support positive face needs while simultaneously threatening negative face needs, this study applied politeness theory to the task of predicting receivers’ responses to affectionate messages from adult platonic friends. Results indicated that direct, unequivocal affectionate messages were the most supportive of positive face and also the most threatening to negative face, while indirect, equivocal messages supported positive face and threatened negative face the least. A curvilinear relationship emerged between the directness of affectionate messages and receivers’ intentions to reciprocate them, with the most direct and most indirect messages being most likely to be reciprocated. The implications of these findings both for affection research and for politeness theory are discussed.     

Hugh Latimer,spokesman for a Christian commonwealth

Hugh Latimer's activities as a Protestant Reformer and his subsequent martyrdom have historically overshadowed his equally important role as a commentator and critic of the socio‐economic conditions of his age. In this essay, Latimer's role as social commentator and critic is described and evaluated.     

Pentadic cartography: Mapping the universe of discourse

Expressions of time have increasingly infused the rhetorical experience of post-industrial war, especially since 9/11. This essay demonstrates how these “signs of time” operate as one of three tropes: deadline/countdown, infinite/infinitesimal war, and the ticking clock. The persistence of such signs of time in public discourse can be seen as an expression of what Paul Virilio has called the “chronopolis,” a political universe textured by real-time communication technologies. The chronopolitical will exhibits certain autocratic traits at odds with democratic ideals, primarily the refashioning of citizen identity into that of the “contemporary.” The analysis here charts the autocratic rhetoric of the chronopolis as a critical democratic project.