Twisted roots: The Western impact on Asian higher education

The long historical and contemporary impact of Western academic models, practices and orientations on Asian universities in such countries as India, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore shaped the nature of higher education systems in these countries. The Japanese colonial impact in Korea and Taiwan is also significant and an interesting variation on the colonial theme. Several Asian countries, including Thailand, Japan and China were not formally colonized, but the mixture of influence on the academic institutions that has developed in these countries reflects considerable Western influence. Contemporary factors such as the international knowledge system, the numbers of students studying in Western nations and patterns of scientific interaction also have a major impact on the growth of universities in Asia.     

Progress report on the development of child abuse prevention, identification, and treatment systems in Eastern Europe

PROBLEM: After the Soviet Union dissolved in 1989, it became apparent that there was little recognition of the problems of child abuse and neglect, professionally, legally, or societally. There were no effective systems or laws in place to deal with these problems. METHOD: Beginning in 1995 the Children's Mental Health Alliance, in conjunction with the Open Society Institute began conducting trainings in Eastern Europe [Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry 39 (2000) 660]. Originally 18 countries from the Baltics to the Balkans participated. A program was elaborated which would proceed in several stages: (1) training mental health professionals to deal with child abuse and neglect (CAN); (2) teaching multidisciplinary team work and fostering the development of multidisciplinary NGOs focused on CAN; (3) promoting the self-sufficiency of these NGO's which would then facilitate social and legal reform and increase public awareness of the problem. Specific methods included multi-national trainings, assignment of mentors to the developing teams who maintained weekly contact with the teams and made yearly site visits to their countries, and overseeing project grants from OSI. RESULTS: NGO's had been established and registered in 11 countries, many establishing a network of programs within their countries. By 2000, over 3800 mental health professional had been trained, either directly by the program or by the trainees of the program. By the end of 2000, over 17,000 other professionals (lawyers, police, judges, educators, other physicians, etc.) had been trained by the network. CONCLUSION: While more work needs to be in this region, the teams in 11 countries have made solid starts.     

Changes in unpunished responding during response-contingent punishment

In two experiments, gerbils that were punished for eating exhibited an increase in only the most probable of several ongoing alternative responses (running) during sessions when eating was suppressed. These results support previously suggested punishment and implicit avoidance rules for predicting the effects of response-contingent punishment in multiple-response baseline procedures. Most subjects also exhibited a decline in unpunished digging responses during punishment sessions. Neither this decline in the digging behavior nor the amount of increase in running behavior supported a quantitative constant proportion rule which predicts that each of the unpunished responses will increase to occupy a constant proportion of the time available to it.     

Physical Activity and School Engagement in Youth: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Physical activity is associated with numerous health benefits in youth; however, these benefits could extend further than health, into education. Our aim was to systematically review and combine in meta-analyses evidence concerning the association between physical activity and the dimensions of school engagement, including behavior (e.g., time-on-task), emotions (e.g., lesson enjoyment), and cognition (e.g., self-regulated learning). We conducted meta-analyses using structural equation modeling on results from 38 studies. Overall, physical activity had a small, positive association with school engagement (d = .28, I² = .86), 95% confidence interval [.12, .46]. This association was moderated by study design, with significant associations shown in randomized controlled trials but not in studies employing other designs. Risk of bias was also a significant effect moderator, as studies with a low risk of bias showed significant associations but not high risk of bias studies. Altogether, these results suggest that physical activity could improve school engagement.     

Age-related Asynchrony of Knowledge and Action

Children's ability to act in accordance with rules was assessed in 2 experiments. Experiment I included 66 children, aged 31, 33.5, or 36 months, who performed 2 tasks. In a forced-choice, deductive sorting task, children were told 2 rules (if-then statements) and then required to use the rules to sort items. A knowledge task tested children's knowledge about which rule's antecedent condition held true for each item. Rules were either based on natural categories (e.g., vehicles vs. musical instruments) or ad hoc categories (e.g., things found inside the house vs. things found outside). Children in the 2 younger age groups performed better on the knowledge task than on the sorting task. The 36-month-olds performed equally well on both tasks. In Experiment 2, groups of 12 32.25-month-olds received either the knowledge task, the sorting task, or a mnemonically supported version of the sorting task. The group that received the knowledge task performed better than the other groups, which did not differ. This result undermines the possibility that differential performance on the knowledge and sorting tasks is due to a difference in memory demand. Taken together, the results of Experiments 1 and 2 imply a relatively rapid, age-related change culminating in the ability to execute systematically rules that require access to extant knowledge.     

Models of shared leadership: Evolving structures and relationships

This article explores potential changes in the power relationships among teachers and principals under four emerging forms of structured teacher involvement in schoolwide decision making: Instructional Leadership Teams, Principals' Advisory Councils, School Improvement Teams, and Lead Teacher Committees. Each organizational model is described in terms of its purpose, its operation, the role of teachers and the principal, and its potential impact on teacher leadership and empowerment. A conceptual framework that views organizational power in terms of access to resources and the ability to obtain cooperation from other actors (Kanter, 1979) is utilized to gauge potential changes in the power of principal and teacher roles under each of these emerging models. The conceptual analysis suggests that models seeking to empower teachers and improve student learning must provide for increased interaction among teachers in curricular and instructional decision making.Presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, April 1988.     

Discrete Time Survival Analysis Via Latent Variable Modeling: A Note on Lagged Depression Links to Stroke in Middle and Late Life

This article is concerned with a latent variable modeling approach to discrete time survival analysis that includes both time-invariant and time-varying covariates. The approach is illustrated with data from the Health and Retirement Study, which are utilized to study further the relationship of depression to stroke in middle and late life. Employing lag-1 depression scores as time-varying covariates, in addition to a set of relevant medical and demographic variables as time-invariant covariates collected at baseline, the article addresses a particular aspect of the prominent vascular depression hypothesis representing an important area in aging research, gerontology, geriatrics, and medicine. The results indicate considerable links of immediately prior depression levels to subsequent occurrences of stroke in middle-aged and older adults. The findings complement those reported by Raykov, Gorelick, Zajacova, and Marcoulides (2017), and are consistent with that hypothesis implying depression as a potential warning sign of an impending stroke.     

Literacy Assessment and Student Diversity: An Australian case study

This article describes the reported practices in literacy assessment, recording, and reporting in 12 Australian schools characterised by populations of diverse learners. The findings indicate the problems and challenges teachers face in providing socially just and inclusive literacy assessment in heterogeneous classrooms. We make a number of suggestions related to enhancing assessment, recording, and reporting at the classroom level and argue for systemic support for teachers.     

Visualization and Representation of Physical Systems: Wavemaker as an Aid to Conceptualizing Wave Phenomena

An understanding of wave mechanics is essential to making the leap from classical to quantum systems. Wavemaker is a simulation environment developed to reveal graphically the behavior of periodic systems using a series of increasingly sophisticated visualization tools. Individual particles in a many-particle system can be instrumented for study of kinematic behavior. Parametric representations reveal time-independent behaviors. Problems dealing with propagation, reflection, and Fourier synthesis are easily studied. Use with students has revealed that many students have preconceptions about the behavior of waves and that use of this software is helpful in connecting real to simulated systems, separating holistic behaviors from those of individual elements, identifying critical parameters, and making connections between variables that are used to describe and measure periodic systems.     

The Logic of Mass Higher Education

The distinguishing characteristic of postsecondary education in the past half century has been expansion -- the emergence of mass higher education worldwide. Now, many industrialised countries educate forty percent or more of youth in postsecondary education, and developing countries are rapidly expanding as well. Mass higher education brings with it certain inevitable changes in higher education. Among these are a diversification of academic institutions, less homogenous student populations, alterations in patterns of academic work and of the academic profession itself, an increase in managerial control of academic institutions, and, recently, a reliance on distance methods of delivering instruction. These changes are part of the logic of mass higher education, and will be increasingly apparent in the 21st century.