Self-Operated Verbal Instructions for People with Intellectual and Visual Disabilities: Using instruction clusters after task acquisition

Three adults with intellectual and visual disabilities were taught vocationally relevant tasks through the use of a self-operated verbal instruction system. During training, the system presented one verbal instruction per task step, individually. After training, the system presented instructions arranged in clusters/groups of two. Data showed that during training all participants achieved percentages of correct task performance exceeding 90. The subsequent use of instruction clusters was effective in maintaining high levels of correct performance for each adult, whereas a deterioration of performance occurred when instructions were not available. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Higher education staff and Brexit. Is the UK losing the youngest and brightest from other EU countries?

ABSTRACT

Since the Brexit referendum in 2016, and the formal act of triggering article 50 by Theresa May’s cabinet in 2017, the UK has entered a period of negotiations, the outcome of which, and also the terms of the post-exiting phase, are still uncertain. In this period of uncertainty, the mobility of people is one of the main issues at stake. The topic is important for the higher education sector where the percentage of (other) European Union staff in UK universities has grown at an impressive rate in recent years before the Brexit referendum. This paper draws from official Higher Education Statistic Agency (HESA) data to investigate if there is any inversion of this trend in the British system, arguing that some ‘Brexodus’ of academic staff – meaning a decrease in the percentage of other EU nationals – has already started for some academics, namely the youngest and the brightest.     

Higher education staff and Brexit. Is the UK losing the youngest and brightest from other EU countries?

Tertiary Education and Management - Since the Brexit referendum in 2016, and the formal act of triggering article 50 by Theresa May’s cabinet in 2017, the UK has entered a period of...     

Learning to fly? First experiences on team learning of Icaros cooperative

Icaros is an information technology (IT) cooperative that was originally owned by 11 IT degree programme students of Saimaa University of Applied Sciences. This article describes experiences and challenges of team building of these students who are called ‘teampreneurs’ during their first year as team entrepreneurs. The findings provided here are based on theme-based interviews and direct observations. The team learning experiences gained during their first year were related to lack of risks and challenges in team building. Previous studies related to team development suggest that cooperation and conflict, and also openness and confrontation, are essential elements for team development. Based on the findings, teampreneurs of Icaros were avoiding confrontation and conflict. These facts inhibited their development to a potential team and they were stuck in the pseudo-team stage with several parallel challenges. Later, after four teampreneurs decided to leave the Icaros cooperative, it created a crisis within the team and the Icaros was able to further develop as a team. The results suggest that team building needs lots of time and patience and cannot be hurried. Furthermore, the role of team coach is crucial in supporting the teampreneurs to confront their challenges related to relationships between each other within the team.     

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN LEARNING OF THE CONCEPT OF FORCE, REPRESENTATIONAL CONSISTENCY, AND SCIENTIFIC REASONING

This quantitative case study used a pre- and posttest design for exploring the gender differences in secondary school students’ (n?=?131, 45 males and 86 females) learning of the force concept when an interactive engagement type of teaching was used. In addition, students’ ability to interpret multiple representations (i.e., representational consistency) was documented by a pre- and posttest and scientific reasoning ability by a pretest only. Males significantly outperformed females in learning of the force concept, pre- and posttest representational consistency, and pretest scientific reasoning. However, the gender difference in learning of the force concept was not significant when ANCOVA was conducted using pretest results of representational consistency and scientific reasoning as covariates. This appeared to indicate that the gender difference in learning gain was related to students’ abilities before the instruction. Thus, the teaching method used was equally effective for both genders. Further, our quantitative finding about the relation between representational consistency and learning of the force concept supports the assumption that multiple representations are important in science learning.     

Rethinking accountability in a knowledge society

Competition between schools combined with test-based accountability to hold schools accountable for predetermined knowledge standards have become a common solution in educational change efforts to improve the performance of educational systems around the world. This is happening as family and community social capital declines in most parts of developed world. Increased competition and individualism are not necessarily beneficial to creating social capital in schools and their communities. This article argues that: (1) the evidence remains controversial that test-based accountability policies improve the quality and efficiency of public education; (2) the current practice of determining educational performance by using primarily standardized knowledge tests as the main means of accountability is not a necessary condition for much needed educational improvement; and (3) there is growing evidence that increased high-stakes testing is restricting students’ conceptual learning, engaging in creative action and understanding innovation, all of which are essential elements of contemporary schooling in a knowledge society. Finland is used as an example to suggest that educational change should rather contribute to increasing networking and social capital in schools and in their communities through building trust and strengthening collective responsibilities within and between schools. This would create better prospects of worthwhile lifelong learning in and out of schools. Based on this analysis, the article concludes that education policies should be directed at promoting more intelligent forms of accountability to meet external accountability demands and to encourage cooperation rather than competition among students, teachers and schools.     

Are teachers teaching for a knowledge society?

Many countries whose economies are in transition have initiated ambitious education reforms intended to modernize their education systems to better respond to the needs of new social and economic realities. Albania is a good example of a society that is emerging from a closed planned socialist system and moving fast to an open society and knowledge‐based economy. As an essential tool in transforming people's knowledge and skills to promote a knowledge society, teaching must reflect, among other things, an active role for students and multilateral communication to support productive learning in classrooms. The aim of this study was to generate scientific evidence for policy‐makers about whether teaching in the first grade of upper secondary schools meets these criteria. Based on our observation data from 303 classrooms in 34 schools in Albania, analyzed using the categories of Flanders' interaction analysis, we found that teacher talk occupies more than 70% of all lesson time and that student‐initiated talk constituted less than 30 seconds within a typical 45‐minute lesson. We conclude that unless education policies give a high priority to supporting teachers in transforming teaching in schools to promote productive, interactive learning, students will not be able to acquire the knowledge and skills they need within a modern knowledge society.     

Environmental innovations in services: Manufacturing–services integration and policy transmissions

This paper investigates the relevant factors behind the almost unexplored realm of environmental innovation in services, using a dataset of 8161 Italian service firms. Specifically, we test whether manufacturing-services integration matters for environmental innovations. In addition, taking account for the heterogeneity of the service industries, we analyse whether environmental policies for manufacturing transmit ‘induced innovation’ effects to services. Our findings show that: (i) the drivers of environmental innovations related to carbon abatement and energy efficiency differ across industries, and (ii) cooperation, training, environmental management systems and public funding play key roles in these processes. The integration of services and manufacturing through push and pull-effects, and the environmental policy transmission effect from manufacturing to services, generally do not seem to have a positive impact on the diffusion of environmental innovations.