Student Effort in Preparing for Exams: Intertemporal Preferences and Loss Aversion

In the last two decades, much empirical research has been done in the field of behavioral economics to explain the psychological foundations for economic decisions. In particular, it has been shown that people exhibit time‐inconsistent behavior when making intertemporal decisions, i.e., they demand higher interest rates for a delay of their consumption in the near rather than in the distant future. People also show loss aversion. They demand more compensation for a loss than they are willing to sacrifice for a gain. We analyze these features for the nonmonetary decision of the amount of time invested in learning hours before an exam. Asked at two different points in time, the students were willing to learn more when the time of learning seemed far away than when the learning time had arrived. On the other hand, students were loss averse trying to prevent a deterioration of their grade to a larger extent than when they tried to work for an amelioration.     

Experiential learning or exploitation? Volunteering for work experience in the UK museums sector

Aspiring museums professionals often have to volunteer outside of formal study programmes in order to gain paid work in the UK museums sector. Volunteering for work experience however, has been largely ignored by previous studies of museum volunteers. This paper aims to provide an insight into the extent of volunteering for work experience and the experiences of these would-be museum workers. The paper presents the result of a postal questionnaire and interviews with both volunteers and managers. A key problem for museums is the resources needed to provide meaningful work experience. For volunteers, a worthwhile work experience placement appears to be almost entirely due to luck and finding a mentor. Voluntary experience therefore seems to be more about developing contacts than learning museum-specific skills. Recommendations are made for improving the volunteers’ experience.     

Opportunities for inclusion? The education of learners with special educational needs and disabilities in special schools in Uganda

The Government of Uganda aims to provide good quality education for all learners in inclusive schools. However, some learners who have severe disabilities, including those who are deaf, will, for some time, continue to receive their education in special schools. In this article, Kirsten Kristensen, consultant in inclusive and special needs education for many countries in East Africa, Martin Omagor-Loican, Commissioner for Special Needs Education, Negris Onen, Principal Education Officer for Special Needs and Inclusive Education, both at the Ministry of Education in Sports in Uganda, and Daniel Okot, co-ordinator for the Diploma in Special Needs Education at Kyambogo University, provide an account of their study of 15 such schools. The findings from the study indicate a striking need for reform and transformation. While Uganda has an advanced structure for training teachers in special needs education, the quality of education and educational materials in special schools, is poor. Often children are admitted to special schools without proper assessment of their educational needs and the resources are not available to provide them with an appropriate range of experiences. The authors of this article call for a thoroughgoing review of provision and make a series of coherent and persuasive recommendations for developments in policy and practice focused on enabling special schools in Uganda to play an essential role in future as resource centres supporting an inclusive education system.     

The politics and policies of parental involvement

Today's parents are involved in college students' lives more than those of any previous generation. Kirsten Kennedy suggests an institution-wide policy on communication with these important stakeholders.     

Recording ‘a very particular Custom’: tattoos and the archive

This paper investigates the describing, dissemination and archiving of records, which have previously not been well described by archives. It asks if new methods of accessing the archive may be used to improve understandings of such records. Specifically, this paper will investigate the records created about tattoos in the nineteenth century following the European exploration of Polynesia, and the transmission of tattoos to the West. The ways in which this indigenous cultural practice was interpreted and recorded are discussed with reference to the records created. Tattoos are inherently physical records, which do not survive beyond the lifespan of their owner. The archiving process for tattoos has thus relied on preserving representations of the tattoo. This paper will ask what these representations of tattoos actually provide evidence of and will use two case studies to examine how records about tattoos have been archived. Finally, it is suggested that a more holistic understanding of tattooing records may be achieved through new ways of describing and classifying records, such as folksonomy.     

Professional learning between past experience and future work

This paper deals with the professionalization of human service work. It analyses learning processes and identity development in the emerging profession of child care with concrete examples from empirical research, based on a life history approach. It discusses examples of careers mainly based on students’ life experience, pointing out that their immediate success in the workplace may inhibit an even better qualification they had been spurred to critical reflection. It further follows a sample of students through their theoretical education and trainee periods, illuminating their changing identification with and understanding of their future work, and their learning of professional knowledge and competences. The conclusion is that the new 3.5 year education in child care pedagogy clearly improves the professional competences of child care, but it also identifies a set of further specific challenges to be met for the development of real professional competences.     

Developmental and Educational Perspectives on Theory Change: To Have and Hold,or To Have and Hone?

Eric Schwitzgebel presents an attractive argument for the use of affective indicators to both assess and extend the 'theory theory' research agenda. A key component of his argument is an account of explanation that can be applied to both children and adults, few of whom possess the attributes and behaviors that warrant being called scientists. The core features of his account include 1) regarding a set of propositions as a theory and 2) subscribing to a theory by accepting and employing this set of propositions to explain events within the theory's domain. We will argue that this account, while potentially helpful for guiding research on the affective content of explanations, requires elaboration because it (1) does not fully characterize what is distinctive and important about theoretical and scientific thinking, (2) raises questions about different kinds of explanations, such as seen in transitions from common-sense explanations to theoretical explanations; (3) favors individual theorizing to the exclusion of socially mediated theorizing, and (4) raises developmental questions about the nature of explanation-seeking and the capacity to apply evidence to evaluate theories.     

Curriculum homeplacing as complicated conversation: (re)narrating the mentoring of Black women doctoral students

ABSTRACT

Through personal and dialogical narratives, we explore the ways Black women mentors (do not) reveal to their mentees their lived-experiences and the personal pain associated with the pursuit of careers in higher education; how and why their narratives of pain and pursuit are negotiated, sanctioned, and/or strategically altered; and the impact these decisions have on the development of Black women graduate students. Drawing on hooks’ notions of ‘imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’ (2015), ‘radical honesty’ (2004), and ‘homeplace’ (1990), we deploy the concept of curriculum homeplacing to more critically examine Black women’s mentoring relationships.     

Putting mobile application privacy in context: An empirical study of user privacy expectations for mobile devices

Users increasingly use mobile devices to engage in social activity and commerce, enabling new forms of data collection by firms and marketers. User privacy expectations for these new forms of data collection remain unclear. A particularly difficult challenge is meeting expectations for contextual integrity, as user privacy expectations vary depending upon data type collected and context of use. This article illustrates how fine-grained, contextual privacy expectations can be measured. It presents findings from a factorial vignette survey that measured the impact of diverse real-world contexts (e.g., medical, navigation, music), data types, and data uses on user privacy expectations. Results demonstrate that individuals’ general privacy preferences are of limited significance for predicting their privacy judgments in specific scenarios. Instead, the results present a nuanced portrait of the relative importance of particular contextual factors and information uses, and demonstrate how those contextual factors can be found and measured. The results also suggest that current common activities of mobile application companies, such as harvesting and reusing location data, images, and contact lists, do not meet users’ privacy expectations. Understanding how user privacy expectations vary according to context, data types, and data uses highlights areas requiring stricter privacy protections by governments and industry.