School inspections in low- and middle-income countries: Explaining impact and mechanisms of impact

Many efforts to implement and improve school inspections have been modelled on examples from high-income countries, and many studies on the effectiveness of such systems have also only been carried out in these countries. However, local contexts in low- and middle-income countries are very different from those in developed countries, and findings about the effectiveness of school inspections from Western studies are therefore not easily transferable to low- and middle-income countries. Existing literature portrays complex and varied links amongst governance context, policy, design of accountability systems, mechanisms of impact and school outcomes that make translation of conditions across studies challenging. This paper presents the results of a systematic review about the conditions under which school inspections lead to improvement in schools and to positive learning outcomes for schoolchildren in low- and middle-income countries, especially the poorest and most marginalised.     

New Visuality in Art/Science: A Pedagogy of Connection for Cognitive Growth and Creativity

New visuality in art/science pedagogies challenges teachers to rethink their curriculum and the role of digital new media in facilitating conceptual thinking and the role of the creative representation of knowledge. Recent neuroscientific research on cognition, perception, memory, and emotion inform and provoke implications for 21st-century learning. Analysis of student artwork uncovers pedagogical challenges for teachers. Teachers use visual learning and its forms of higher process thinking to allow students to make cognitive connections with images, giving them the capacity to integrate concepts for the communication of art/science learning. Examples of student learning from years 3–5 and 15–17 illustrate these ideas.     

Analysis of Open Access Landscape

This paper is created by bounding 5 editorials of Public Library of Science （PLoS） which have written on various aspects of open access. It covers wide range topics of important open access issues, such as from paying for open access to copyright to open access as a public issue, which may be more or less of interest of our audience.     

A call for more mixed methods in sport management research

Despite the popularity and strong advocacy for combining quantitative and qualitative methods, few mixed methods approaches are found in the sport management research. As a result, this article examines the frequency with which mixed methods research has been used in recent sport management research, and demonstrates ways in which mixed methods can help improve the validity of research findings in sport management related topics. Because research in sport management often is concerned with causal questions, this article provides mixed methods designs for improving causal inference. Examples are provided from three areas of sport management research, including marketing, organizational behavior, and finance. The designs that are provided are based on the mixed methods design dimensions of time order and priority of quantitative and qualitative data.     

2008年票据印刷业展望

OutputLinks是世界HVTO（high volume transaction output，大批量票据印刷）领域重要的信息资源公司之一，目前其已与科印传媒建立了合作伙伴关系。《数码印刷》杂志将从本期起，增设OutputLinks专栏，刊登来自OutputLinks的精彩报道，为中国印刷界，特别是票据印刷领域的专业人士提供更高质量的资讯服务。本期专栏．OutputLinks公司首席执行官Andy Plata先生、首席运营官Julie Plata女士将和大家分享他们对票据印刷行业的观点和看法。