Competence and competence frameworks in career guidance: complex and contested concepts

This paper considers some of the debates surrounding the term competence and the relevance that these have for the development of competence frameworks. Such frameworks are increasingly on the agenda, since they purport to support training programme development, to identify competence gaps, to promote self-development, and to ensure common standards. This paper shows, however, that notions of competence have specific meanings in particular contexts, that they have been contested, and that they have fallen into and out of favour over time. The paper concludes by teasing out the implications that competing definitions of competence have for the guidance field.     

Merit-Based Student Aid and Freshman Interstate College Migration: Testing a Dynamic Model of Policy Change

This study examines how state merit-based scholarships individually and simultaneously with prepaid tuition plans influence the interstate migration of college-bound freshmen. State freshman migration percentages were examined over a 10-year period. Results of an interrupted time-series model suggested that students generally respond to merit-based tuition aid in accordance with our initial prediction based on factors influencing student choice in attending postsecondary institutions. More specifically, many students choose to attend an in-state college in order to be eligible for state merit-based scholarships. Moreover, for home states that adopted both merit-based scholarships and prepaid tuition contracts, student out-migration was further reduced over time.

Exploring cultural differences in critical thinking: Is it about my thinking style or the language I speak?

Critical thinking is deemed as an ideal in academic settings, but cultural differences in critical thinking performance between Asian and Western students have been reported in the international education literature. We examined explanations for the observed differences in critical thinking between Asian and New Zealand (NZ) European students, and tested hypotheses derived from research in international education and cultural psychology. The results showed that NZ European students performed better on two objective measures of critical thinking skills than Asian students. English proficiency, but not dialectical thinking style, could at least partially if not fully explain these differences. This finding holds with both self-report (Study 1) and objectively measured (Study 2a) English proficiency. The results also indicated that Asian students tended to rely more on dialectical thinking to solve critical thinking problems than their Western counterparts. In a follow-up data analysis, students' critical thinking was found to predict their academic performance after controlling for the effects of English proficiency and general intellectual ability, but the relationship does not vary as a function of students' cultural backgrounds or cultural adoption (Study 2b). Altogether, these findings contribute to our understanding of the influence of culture on critical thinking in international education.     

Analyzing the factors that influence persistence rates in STEM field,majors: Introduction to the symposium

To improve our understanding of the factors that influence persistence rates in STEM field majors, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation provided a grant to the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute in 2007 to study the question. The five papers in the symposium represent the output of the project. This introduction explains the motivation for undertaking the study, describes the questions the researchers asked and the data bases they used in their studies, summarizes their findings, and suggests directions for future research.     

Faculty employment and R&D expenditures at Research universities

This study uses panel data to examine the relationship between faculty employment and external R&D expenditures at Research and Doctoral institutions over a 15-year period of time. On average, a 1% increase in the number of full-time faculty is associated with about 0.2% increase in total R&D expenditure. Further, a one percentage point increase in the share of full-time faculty members that are not on tenure-track lines is associated with a decrease in total external R&D expenditure by about 0.6%, suggesting that full-time faculty that are tenured or on tenure-tracks are the main category of faculty that generate external R&D funding. Further, our results suggest that an increasing usage of part-time faculty, holding constant the institution's full-time faculty size, boosts an institution's external R&D expenditures. On average, a one percentage point increase in the share of part-time faculty members is associated with a 0.44% increase in the total external R&D expenditures. Increases in graduate student enrollments are associated with increases in external R&D expenditures. Finally, an institution's external R&D expenditures are significantly influenced by both the amount of its own institutionally financed research expenditures and the level of federal funding for research.     

Redefining Student Success: Applying Different Multinomial Regression Techniques for the Study of Student Graduation Across Institutions of Higher Education

Current definitions of retention and graduation rates distort the picture of student success by limiting it to completion of a degree at the institution of entry. By incorporating data from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC), a clearer picture emerges. The NSC data captures retention and graduation at both entry and transfer institutions. To accommodate this polychotomous definition of success, more sophisticated methods of modeling limited dependent variables are needed. Though multinomial logit is often considered the most accessible method, the strict assumptions it imposes may be inappropriate. We therefore compare multinomial regression techniques to assess their utility in modeling multi-institutional student success.     

The Effect of Guided Inquiry-Based Instruction on Middle School Students’ Understanding of Lunar Concepts

This study investigated the effect of non-traditional guided inquiry instruction on middle school students’ conceptual understandings of lunar concepts. Multiple data sources were used to describe participants’ conceptions of lunar phases and their cause, including drawings, interviews, and a lunar shapes card sort. The data were analyzed via a constant comparative method to produce profiles of each participant’s conceptual understandings and nonparametric tests also were used. Results revealed very positive performance for observable moon phases and patterns of change, as well as the cause of moon phases. Results indicated that significantly more participants shifted from drawing nonscientific shapes on the pretest to drawing scientific shapes on the post-test. Results for the drawings of moon phase sequences were similar in that significantly more participants shifted from drawing alternative waxing and waning sequences on the pretest to drawing scientific sequences on the post-test. Also, significantly more participants shifted from alternative understanding of the cause of the moon phases on the pretest to scientific understanding on the post-test. Implications of these findings and recommendations for further research are provided.     

Narrating Characters: The Making of a School Bully

Jake was a popular sixth-grader at a local public school. He had plenty of friends and admirers, made good grades, and had adequate social skills. Jake was also a bully. Over the course of that sixth grade year Jake recruited a couple of friends, and then a much larger groups of peers, to target a classmate: Matthew. The school was quick to respond, but despite clear training, strong reprimand, and relentless surveillance the bullying of Matthew only stopped when he finally transferred to a new school. The next year Jake picked a new target: Trent. To date bullying research has largely employed empirical methodologies, including qualitative and quantitative approaches. This paper offers a fresh perspective, employing a missing philosophical lens toward the instantiation of bullying on the school campus. How might a bully – or a group of bullying participants – be narrated in such a way that he or she chooses violence or domination as a means through which to secure status? More specifically, what forces bear upon the experience of bullying, what cultures might its dominance mirror, and from where is its meaning derived? In considering these questions I employ the voices of two disparate philosophers; John Dewey and Michel Foucault.     

Math Achievement Trajectories Among Black Male Students in the Elementary- and Middle-School Years

In this article, we analyze the variation in math achievement trajectories of Black male students to understand the different ways these students successfully or unsuccessfully navigate schools and the school characteristics that are associated with their trajectories. Using longitudinal student-level data from a large urban US city (n = 7,039), we analyze Black male students from one cohort to identify trajectories. We find a lack of growth in standardized math scores, suggesting that, on average, math proficiency among Black male students in our sample is declining over time. We found that the 4th-grade standardized math scores of subsidized-lunch students were somewhat lower than those of nonsubsidized students and those of retained students were substantially lower than their counterparts. The average math score of a Black male student's cohort appears to be the only variable amenable to policy manipulation that has a sizeable association with the growth of their standardized math scores, suggesting that putting Black male students in more challenging learning environments may be the best way to increase math proficiency over time. By themselves, other policy decisions (reducing student mobility, teacher turnover, or special education classification; increasing attendance or spending on after-school programming; or hiring more qualified or experienced teachers) all appear to have no or negligible associations with growth in math scores.