世界著名沉船事件之一玛丽号

1545年“玛丽·罗斯”号在海港沉没。然而, 50年前,她却是亨利八世舰队的骄傲。     

Math-gender stereotypes in elementary school children

A total of 247 American children between 6 and 10 years of age (126 girls and 121 boys) completed Implicit Association Tests and explicit self-report measures assessing the association of (a) me with male (gender identity), (b) male with math (math-gender stereotype), and (c) me with math (math self-concept). Two findings emerged. First, as early as second grade, the children demonstrated the American cultural stereotype that math is for boys on both implicit and explicit measures. Second, elementary school boys identified with math more strongly than did girls on both implicit and self-report measures. The findings suggest that the math-gender stereotype is acquired early and influences emerging math self-concepts prior to ages at which there are actual differences in math achievement.     

Explaining Estimated Economies of Scale and Scope in Higher Education: A Meta-Regression Analysis

Numerous studies have investigated economies of scale and scope in higher education as a means of providing public and private providers of college and university teaching, research and other services and their stakeholders with knowledge of the cost structures that underpin provision in this economically and socially important sector. However, debate continues on the precise nature of the economies of scale and scope in higher education given the mixed findings, largely because of significant institutional and other differences across studies. To address this, we employ meta-regression analysis to explore not only the overall level of scale and scope economies across more than 40 international studies conducted in Australia, the US, the UK, Italy, China, and elsewhere since the early 1980s, but also those factors that potentially affect their presence in the higher education sector. Our findings suggest that functional form and allowances for managerial efficiency have a significant impact on the estimated scale economies. In contrast, for scope economies, the key discriminating factors appear to be when the analysis was conducted, the diversity of the sample, and the national level of economic development.     

Pre-figurative practice and the educational leadership of Sir Alec Clegg in the West Riding of Yorkshire,England (1945–1974)

ABSTRACT

This article recalls a time when local government infrastructure was strong and a Chief Education Officer's (CEO) vision could be realised across a region, in Clegg's case the West Riding of Yorkshire, one of the largest of the pre-1974 counties in England. It is timely to revisit Clegg's educational leadership and practice from 1945 to 1974, as a valuable source of learning, and challenge to the current ideologically-informed policy rhetoric which has undermined the framework of democratic educational decision-making. The authors identify four possible areas to learn from Clegg's work. Firstly, the need for CEOs or their modern-day equivalents or successors, to consider their potential as political and community leaders; secondly, Clegg's leadership style prefigures some of the recent discussion about the leadership of public services in uncertain times; thirdly a re-evaluation of administration and bureaucracy; and lastly the need for supportive partnerships to enable schools to thrive.     

Australian Postgraduate Students' Perceptions,Preferences and Mobility

Postgraduate students' choice of university, and related mobility issues, have been of interest to Australian university researchers, supervisors and administrators for some time. However, with the release of the Commonwealth Government's 1999 Green Paper on research and research training, which proposes greater portability of research student funding, a sense of urgency regarding these issues has developed. This paper reports on students' choice of a particular university for postgraduate research and on what information they made those decisions. A survey was conducted in 1997 of 938 applicants for Postgraduate Research Scholarships to Flinders University, Macquarie University and the Universities of Western Australia, Adelaide and Melbourne. The survey sought to identify respondents' choices and possible movement to undertake research awards. Questions dealt with a wide range of issues with a particular focus on sources used to access information on higher degrees, preference(s) for where they wished to study, factors leading to their preferred choice, and influences on the decision to move or not move to another institution. Approximately 50% of respondents were younger than 25 years and only 27% were living with their parents. An Honour's degree was the most common prior qualification for students (73%), but only 61% were enrolling directly from their previous degree. Thirty-six per cent reported that they regularly read their main local paper for information related to postgraduate research opportunities and 39% of respondents did not regularly access any source of media for postgraduate information. Forty-two per cent of students did not explore any opportunities at other universities prior to making their decision about enrolment. Almost all students who were planning to enrol at the same university were remaining in the same department. Commensurate with this, 73% reported that their Honour's supervisor or academic staff in their original university were their major source of information on study destinations. These results provide baseline data, which can be used to approach the issue of postgraduate mobility more strategically.     

Distorted representations of the ‘capability approach’ in Australian school education

Recently, curriculum developments in Australia have seen the incorporation of functionalist ‘general capabilities’ as essential markers of schooling, meaning that any pedagogical expression of classroom-based practice, including subsequent instruction, should entail the identification and development of operational general capabilities. The paper questions and critiques recent curriculum developments in Australia that characterises capabilities purely in functionalist terms, something that the broader capabilities literature eschews. The analysis is informed by aspects of the theoretical frameworks of Martin Heidegger and Pierre Bourdieu. It examines the notion of ‘general capabilities’ in the Australian Curriculum. The paper argues that there is an inherent contradiction in Australian education policy, namely a vocationally oriented national school curriculum with implied functionings that cannot fulfil designated purposes. The paper finds that the curriculum's connection to increased individual and national economic prosperity, one championing ‘jobs and careers of the twenty-first century’, is evident, although current populous forms and categories of employment seem to suggest otherwise.     

A content analysis of the presentation of the mole concept in chemistry textbooks

The goal of this study was to examine the means used by textbook authors to introduce, define, and explain the mole concept in high school and introductory college chemistry textbooks. The analysis was framed by four questions:

• 1 How is the mole defined?
• 2 What concepts about the atom are introduced prior to the mole?
• 3 Is Avogadro's constant presented as an experimentally determined value?
• 4 What is the context for introducing the mole?

Twenty-nine high school and introductory college level chemistry texts were examined. After independent reading of appropriate sections of each text, discussion of differences, second or third readings of texts, and subsequent discussions, both authors reach 100% agreement concerning the results. Major conclusions were

• 1 Two ways of defining the mole dominate the texts. One way defines the mole as Avogadro's number (6.02 × 10²³) particles; the other method defines the mole in terms of carbon-12.
• 2 All texts that present a definition in terms of C-12 introduce and define concepts about the atom prior to introducing the mole.
• 3 Most texts at all levels point out that the value 6.02 × 10²³ is an experimentally determined quantity.
• 4 Nearly all texts discuss the mole in relation to die problem of finding a way to count particles that are too small to be directly weighed. Most texts also use a familiar counting unit, such as the dozen, to introduce the mole by analogy.

Four issues were discussed: (a) the defining attributes of the mole concept itself and the cognitive requirements for comprehending the two most frequently used definitions; (b) the connection between the definition of the mole presented in the text and the concepts about atoms that are introduced before the mole concept is developed; (c) the experimental nature of Avogadro's number; and (d) the context or setting for developing the mole concept.     

Article Title Here

This article attempts to analyse the ongoing debate regarding open-mindedness as an educational value. The views of Hare, McLaughlin and Gardner are considered. They do not always agree on what open-mindedness is, and the discussion could benefit from a more unified terminology and better counter-examples. The value and limitations of open-mindedness in both science and the humanities are discussed and analysed. It is argued that open-mindedness, while clearly a virtue if not taken to excess, need not be a goal of the educational process.     

Representing How Rabbits Quack and Competitors Act: Limits on Preschoolers' Efficient Ability to Track Perspective

This study investigated whether humans have two mind‐reading systems whereby the efficient system, unlike the flexible system, is naturally limited. There were two experiments and the first included adults as well as children (3‐ to 4‐year‐olds; total N = 128). In Experiment 1, all groups efficiently gazed in anticipation of an agent's beliefs about object location but not object identity (an ambiguous figure). In Experiment 2, children showed limits in anticipating a competitive agent's action in terms of his perspective on what is desirable. Flexibility in verbally predicting agents' actions across contexts developed with age. Convergence on signature limits across different ages and methods suggests that indirect anticipations involve minimal mind reading, whereas direct predictions tap a refined understanding of perspective.     

Engaging suppliers in CRM: The role of justice in buyer–supplier relationships

Given the crucial role of suppliers in collaborative supply chains, it is surprising that little attention has been paid to the nature and management of supplier relationships in the implementation of a retailer's Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy. To address this gap in the extant literature, the theory of organizational justice is used to explore the extent to which perceived fairness in buyer–supplier relationships supports or inhibits supplier engagement with the CRM process. The rationale is that suppliers who feel fairly treated by key retail customers are more likely to invest resources in the acquisition and use of data central to the retailer's CRM strategy. By empirically testing a conceptual model linking downstream CRM to upstream SRM, the results provide evidence to indicate that customer data use is significantly influenced by perceptions of fairness, particularly with respect to the distribution of rewards, and the transparency of decision-making processes. As a key criticism of CRM centers upon the failure of organizations to exploit the full potential of customer data, the results highlight the usefulness of understanding the relational linkages between buyers and suppliers and the consequential behavior of suppliers in terms of engagement with customer data vital to the success of retailers’ CRM strategies.