What does better peer review look like? Underlying principles and recommendations for better practice

We conducted a literature review of best practice in peer review. Following this research, we identified five principles for better peer review: Content Integrity, Content Ethics, Fairness, Usefulness, and Timeliness. For each of these principles, we have developed a set of recommendations to improve peer review standards. In this article, we describe the role of peer review and how our five principles support that goal. This article is intended to continue the conversation about improving peer review standards and provide guidance to journal teams looking to improve their standards. It is accompanied by a detailed checklist, which could be used by journal teams to assess their current peer review standards.     

From Flexibility to Constraint: The Contrastive Use of Lexical Tone in Early Word Learning

Infants must develop both flexibility and constraint in their interpretation of acceptable word forms. The current experiments examined the development of infants' lexical interpretation of non‐native variations in pitch contour. Fourteen‐, 17‐, and 19‐month‐olds (Experiments 1 and 2, N = 72) heard labels for two novel objects; labels contained the same syllable produced with distinct pitch contours (Mandarin lexical tones). The youngest infants learned the label–object mappings, but the older groups did not, despite being able to discriminate pitch differences in an object‐free task (Experiment 3, N = 14). Results indicate that 14‐month‐olds remain flexible regarding what sounds make meaningful distinctions between words. By 17–19 months, experience with a nontonal native language constrains infants' interpretation of lexical tone.     

What Structures?

This article examines how the topic of an ethnically diverse workforce can become an organizational problem (or not) in private media companies. The study is based on interviews with Human Resources managers and persons responsible for diversity issues at these companies. This article favors a communicative approach by relating structures to agency through the concept of expectation. This is in contrast to the bulk of media research, which considers structures as something fixed and objective in determining organizational action. By exploring the expectations structures we can see which expectation patterns condition organizational communication. As a result, the main pattern of migrant background as adding value to the organization (or not) could be revealed as a guiding distinction in organizational communication about diverse workforces.     

Leben am Rande? Dimensionen der Benachteilung von Jugendlichen

?konomisches, soziales und kulturelles Kapital z?hlen zu den zentralen Determinanten des übergangs von Jugendlichen in die Ausbildung und in den Beruf. Allerdings zeichnen sich diese Faktoren durch eine relativ hohe interpersonelle Variabilit?t aus, die gerade in Bezug auf benachteiligte junge Erwachsene einer differenzierten Analyse bedarf. Der folgende Beitrag m?chte deshalb zun?chst in Anlehnung an die Kapitalientheorie von Pierre Bourdieu die Frage untersuchen, ob es innerhalb der Gruppe von benachteiligten Jugendlichen Unterschiede in der Kapitalausstattung gibt, und ob diese eine Wirkung auf den Verbleib in und den Anschluss an eine Ma?nahme haben. Anhand eines Datensatzes, der im Rahmen der wissenschaftlichen Begleitung des Modellprogramms „Freiwilliges soziales Trainingsjahr“ (FSTJ) durch das Deutsche Jugendinstitut generiert wurde, werden theoretische Annahmen zu unterschiedlicher Kapitalausstattung benachteiligter Jugendlicher im FSTJ und ihre Wirkungen empirisch überprüft.     

The rise of work-based academic education in Austria,Germany and Switzerland

Austria, Germany and Switzerland are renowned for their extensive systems of collective vocational skill formation, which, however, have developed largely in separation from higher education. This divide has become increasingly contested as a result of a variety of socioeconomic factors that have led to an increasing demand for higher level skills. Do the three countries deal with these challenges in similar ways? The comparative analysis is based on process tracing from the 1960s to 2013 and builds on historical institutionalism as well as several dozen expert interviews with key stakeholders. A key finding is that all three countries have developed hybrid forms of work-based academic education that combine elements of vocational training and higher education. However, in Austria and Switzerland, these hybrids have been integrated into the traditional model of collective governance, whereas the German case signifies a departure from this model.     

Competencies and career choice motives: characteristics of high school students interested in teacher education programmes

In contrast to other career choices, the teaching profession seems familiar to those interested in teaching because they have had the chance to observe teachers for years. This phenomenon is known as the apprenticeship of observation and manifests in naïve ideas and expectations of teaching among teacher students. Therefore, characteristics of students interested in becoming teachers are important for early teacher education and counselling. These characteristics include competencies and motives, but nothing is known about their relationship to each other. Following international teaching standards and the expectancy-value framework, this paper analyses associations between both. Three competencies (i.e. planning, communication and cooperation) and seven career choice motives were examined using a paper–pencil survey of 907 high school students. Altogether, 463 students were able to imagine becoming a teacher and were included in the analyses. SEM analyses showed that (1) of all the competencies, communication had the most associations with motives, (2) the motive ‘low difficulty of study’ is positively related to planning, (3) the findings regarding extrinsic motives are ambiguous, and (4) gender differences are marginal. Practical implications for early teacher education and counselling are discussed.     

Unravelling legacy: a triadic actor-network theory approach to understanding the outcomes of mega events

Mega events have recently attracted the attention of social scientists due to their important role for festival capitalism, urban regeneration and political propaganda. Their planning stage often produces elaborate strategies for maximising the benefits before, during and after the actual event, which has given rise to interdisciplinary studies of event legacy and leveraging. This paper aims to advance ongoing debates on the outcomes of sports mega events by bringing together the literatures on mega event legacy, leveraging and actor-network theory. Drawing on a case study on the usage of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, the main legacy of the London 2012 Olympic Games, the paper develops a novel conceptual framework for researching the multi-scalar outcomes of mega events and locating respective studies within the resulting wider research agenda. The proposed concept extends Preuss' (2007) legacy cube in two ways by visualising its five research dimensions in what we call the ‘legacy rings’ and by using three rather than two sub-dimensions per ring, thereby replacing the often restrictive dyads of dualistic thinking through more comprehensive but still understandable triads of triadic thought (Jöns, 2006, 2018).