Skills, Socrates and the Sophists: Learning from History

The Sophists, and the Socratic response they provoked, are considered in order to elucidate issues raised by present-day skill-talk. These issues include: whether skills avoid questions of ends and truth; the existence of general skills, such as critical thinking; the importance of knowledge; skills and the personality; and some implications for teaching and philosophy.     

Teaching Prospect Theory with the Deal or No Deal Game Show

Recent evidence indicates that decision makers are more sensitive to potential losses than gains. Loss aversion psychology has led behavioural economists to look beyond expected utility by developing prospect theory. We demonstrate this theory using the Deal or No Deal game show.     

Literacy Through the Book Arts

Children as readers and writers-and now as book artists too. Paul Johnson shows how children can be helped to learn the skills of book-making, thus empowering them as writers and illustrators by helping them to become the creators of beautiful books. The story grammars of different cultures include the way a story is laid out for people to read; Paul Johnson describes book designs from various cultures and shows how different book forms require children to read and tell stories in certain ways. Illustrations of various designs are shown within the article.     

Are governments complying with transparency? Findings from 15 years of evaluation

How well do governments comply with their own transparency statutes? Alarmingly, answers to this question are in short supply because of patchy comparative data. This study begins to address this gap by analyzing an exhaustive compilation of 265 transparency compliance evaluations (i.e. audits) authored by NGOs, academics, and government oversight authorities across Latin America between 2003 and 2018. Aggregating data on patterns of evaluation and public sector compliance with transparency statutes, we find modest increases in compliance over time, strikingly low compliance with passive transparency compliance (i.e. governmental responses to citizen requests) at the local versus national levels of government, and significantly higher compliance scores when government oversight agencies act as evaluators. Our data also reveal worrying gaps in evaluation efforts. Evaluators tend to focus far more on active transparency (i.e. website-based disclosure) than passive transparency, more on national level governments than subnational governments, and preponderantly on the executive as opposed to legislative or judicial branches of government. Textual analyses show that education is the most evaluated policy theme, with financial policies and social services close behind. In presenting the first large-scale cross-national assessment of transparency compliance, the current study brings to light trends in the effectiveness of transparency regimes and patterns of transparency evaluation across Latin America.     

Adult Role Models: Feasibility,Acceptability, and Initial Outcomes for Sex Education

The authors present the feasibility and acceptability of a parent sexuality education program led by peer educators in community settings. They also report the results of an outcome evaluation with 71 parents who were randomized to the intervention or a control group and surveyed one month prior to and six months after the four-week intervention. The program was highly feasible and acceptable to participants, and the curriculum was implemented with a high level of fidelity and facilitator quality. Pilot data show promising outcomes for increasing parental knowledge, communication, and monitoring of their adolescent children.