Participation Studies and Cross-National Comparison: Proliferation,Prudence, and Possibility

Over the last three decades the practice of surveying a country's population to gauge participation in various arts and cultural activities has spread. This paper considers twenty different contemporary participation studies, which cover thirty-five countries (thirty-six if you distinguish the study for the United Kingdom from the study for England) plus the Canadian province of Québec. The paper is restricted to what might be described as “traditional” participation studies—random surveys of the adult population to ascertain the participation of various demographic groups in one or another cultural behavior in the previous twelve months. Typically, the results of these surveys are summarized in a participation rate—the percentage of the demographic group that has reported a particular form of participation. Collectively, the studies summarized here provide forty-five different sets of participation rates.

That so many participation studies now exist for so many countries invites comparison. But what sort of comparison is possible? The paper begins with a consideration of the various definitions of “participation” and looks at the history of participation studies. I then address the issue of comparability, particularly with respect to variation in the design of participation studies. I also address the issue of facilitating the interpretation and use of participation data, which inevitably leads to the question of the extent to which the results of participation studies actually impact policy choices. Comparable data are not necessarily usable data, but neither are usable data necessarily comparable data.

Differences in methodology, it turns out, severely restrict one's ability to compare responsibly. Nevertheless, it does seem possible to articulate some broad hypotheses across countries. Still, the primary conclusion is that while one should be wary of ex post harmonization of participation studies, one should also be wary of ex ante harmonization. What has been created, in the end, is a research terrain in which (cross-national) comparability is traded off against (local) usability.     

In Search of Unicorns and Effective Teacher Education

This article examines the merits of WebQuests in facilitating students’ in-depth understanding of science concepts using the four principles of learning gathered from the National Research Council reports How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (1999) and the How Students Learn: Science in the Classroom (2005) as an analytic framework. Modifications needed to make a well-constructed WebQuests for science teaching aligned to the four principles include (1) integrating student science interests and cultural and social backgrounds to curricular goals and then using this as means to design WebQuests, (2) providing students opportunities to examine science-related Internet websites to discriminate credible and false information and then giving them the opportunity to include and use the websites for the task step in WebQuests, and (3) providing cognitive tools and guidance within the process step so that students are engaged in argumentation and negotiation akin to a community of scientists.     

Student Success in Developmental Mathematics Courses

Mathematics is a particular stumbling block for community college students in developmental course work. The present study empirically investigated student-level and teacher-level factors that influence the success of community college students enrolled in developmental mathematics courses. Specifically, numerous variables in one statistical model were examined, which included student self-efficacy (SE) beliefs in various aspects of academic engagement, previous course difficulties, full-time teaching status, and class attendance policies. Multiple regression results show that attendance was the largest predictor for higher course grades, followed by repeating a mathematics course and students’ sense of SE. In the hierarchical line modeling (HLM) model, teachers’ full-time status was a significant predictor in the model, but when teaching status was controlled for, the remaining student belief variables in the model were not statistically significant except SE in Cognitive Strategies, Self-Regulated Learning, and Motivational Strategies. The results provide empirical support for increased communication between full- and part-time faculty members, implementation of attendance policies, academic interventions prior to students’ failures, and the need to address students’ sense of SE.