Academic Staff Involvement and Openness to Diversity in International Educational Organisations: Is There a Moderating Effect of Shared Language?

Joint work among academic staff is important for solving the ever‐increasing number of complex tasks that are becoming part of everyday activities in higher education. At the same time, diversification and internationalisation may challenge collaboration processes and communication demands. Speaking a shared language consistently could be a way of overcoming problems. Hence, this study focuses on the effect of shared language among academic staff on the relation between academic staff involvement in work processes and openness to diversity. This study draws on data from 489 Danish academic staff members in science departments of three universities. Results show positive associations between academic staff involvement and all openness‐to‐diversity variables (openness to informational, linguistic, value and visible diversity). Shared language had a positive effect on openness to surface level types of diversity (linguistic and visible) but no effect on openness to deep‐level types of diversity (informational and value).     

How the existence of special schools affects the placement of students with special needs in inclusive primary schools

Although inclusion is the declared goal, the transition from a system based on special schools to an inclusive school system has only been progressing very slowly in individual countries. In an evolving school system, the existing special schools keep struggling to justify their existence. This study investigates the regional distribution effects based on official school data and shows the influence of a pull effect on special schools as a distance effect of special schools affecting the placement of students. For this purpose, official school statistics including all students at special and regular schools in the years 2010, 2015 and 2020 (N = 11 280 040) are evaluated in a spatiotemporal comparison using Educational Data Mining. In a hierarchical regression model on school placement in inclusive schools, the distance between primary and special schools has the highest influence (β = 0.48) on the inclusion rate (i.e., the proportion of students with special needs who are educated in regular schools in relation to all students with disabilities), along with the size (β = −0.14) and the density of special schools in a district (β = −0.12). The effects differ according to the population density of the region and are stronger in large cities. When the proportion of students with and without SEN in regular schools is considered (support rate), the density of special schools has the greatest impact on school placement (ß = 43.44). Self-preservation of schools, traditional funding systems and regional differences between urban and rural areas are discussed as possible reasons.     

Universities and the public recognition of expertise

This article argues that new sites of knowledge production, increasingly cultivated by the mass media, are threatening the role of academics and universities as traditional sources of expertise. Drawing upon the conceptual categories of Pierre Bourdieu, the article suggests an alternative way of understanding this ‚crisis of legitimacy’.     

History,nation and school inspections: the introduction of citizenship education in elementary schools in late nineteenth-century Sweden

It was in the late nineteenth century that teaching in Sweden’s elementary schools began its transformation from a religious education to a broader, national citizenship education that included history and geography. International research has pointed to a connection between the introduction of school inspections and the reform of public education during this period. In Sweden, however, the practice of inspection has not been explored at any length. This article therefore considers the part played by school inspections in the implementation of a more extensive curriculum in Swedish elementary schools in the period 1860–1900, with a particular focus on the subject of history, using a study of inspection reports from the diocese of Uppsala. It is argued that school inspectors had a key role in initiating reform at the local level, but also that the move towards broader-based citizenship education was not a simple, straightforward process.     

Sensation Seeking and Narrative Transportation: High Sensation Seeking Children's Interest in Reading Outside of School

High sensation seekers (HSS) prefer messages that allow them to maintain an optimal level of arousal (i.e., highly arousing messages). Transportation theory suggests that narrative immersion in a story may moderate reader arousal, and thus HSS message selection. To test this idea, a survey was administered to 120 fourth and fifth graders. In addition to measuring sensation seeking and transportation, the survey assessed interest in reading outside of school (i.e., leisure reading). HSS were found to be less likely to engage in leisure reading. Consistent with the activation model of information exposure, a moderated mediation analysis revealed that whether HSS engaged in leisure reading hinged on their level of narrative transportation (moderator) and subsequent reader boredom (mediator). HSS who successfully transported while reading were no different than their low sensation seeking peers. From a genre standpoint, high sensation seeking children with high narrative transportation scores were found to be especially interested in science fiction/fantasy books. Strategies for increasing leisure reading as well as constructing narratives that are engaging to high sensation seeking children are discussed.     

Investigating the feasibility of using assessment and explanatory feedback in desktop virtual reality simulations

Educational technology research and development - There is great potential in making assessment and learning complementary. In this study, we investigated the feasibility of developing a desktop...     

Uncomfortable encounters between elite and “shadow education” in India—Indian Institutes of Technology and the Joint Entrance Examination coaching industry

India’s elite sector of engineering universities, Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), are seen as safe gateways to a life in the politically hyped “new India” of the global knowledge economy. The Indian entrance exam coaching industry each year enrolls hundreds of thousands of students in classes strictly directed at “cracking” the institutes’ famous Joint Entrance Examination (JEE). Vast majorities of students at IITs are by now former coaching students, and coaching is increasingly supplanting performance in secondary education as the perceived prerequisite for IIT admission. This poses serious questions about the ability of the institutions to autonomously steer student selection and recruit the select exceptional students whom until now have kept “IITians” in the center of imaginaries of India’s future. This article explores the case of residential pre-entrance exam coaching to assess the coaching sector’s role in shaping India’s future technological leaders. It assesses the educational structure of the sector, its effect on student lives, the life aspirations it relies on, and how it is shaping IIT education itself. The case of entrance exam coaching in India, it is argued, prompt a reassessment of the concept of “shadow education” in order to begin a more thorough research agenda focused on the educational production and policy consequences of this “shadow” industry as an integrated (even if unwanted) and co-constitutive part of the higher education sector.