The role of schools’ perceived human resource policies in teachers’ professional development activities: a comparative study of innovations toward competence-based education

The change toward competence-based education has implications for teachers as well as school management. This study investigates which professional development activities teachers undertake related to this change and how these activities differ among schools with various human resource (HR) policies. Two types of HR policy were involved: (1) a government-enforced, national system of Integrated Personnel Management and (2) a voluntary, integrative approach of Schooling of teachers, Organizational development of schools and teacher training institutes, Action- and development-oriented research, and Professional development of teachers. Semi-structured interviews with 30 teachers in nine schools with different HR policies were held and analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Findings show that teachers undertake professional development activities in five categories: maintaining knowledge base, applying and experimenting, reflection, collaboration, and activities indirectly related to teaching practice. Teachers’ professional development activities were found to be relatively similar across schools with different HR policies. It is concluded that neither government-enforced nor voluntary HR policies seem to play much of a role in the participation by teachers in professional development activities. Implications for further research and school practice are discussed.     

Content validity of game-based assessment: case study of a serious game for ICT managers in training

Serious games foster the acquisition of complex problem-solving skills. Assessment of such skills should be in line with instruction, and within a serious game environment its content validity should equal face-to-face assessment. Research on assessment in serious gaming has remained rather scarce. This article shows how assessment can be implemented in serious gaming in a way that assures content validity. The core of the authors’ validation method entails mapping learning activities (as contained in the game scenario) on performance indicators and outputs (as derived from formal attainment levels). They present how they have elaborated and applied the method for an assessment game for ICT managers in secondary vocational education. They describe the procedure and extent to which this assessment is content-valid compared to face-to-face assessment.     

Sex differences in the acceptability and short-term outcomes of a web-based personalized feedback alcohol intervention for high school seniors

Despite the escalation of alcohol use through high school, the majority of research on school-based alcohol interventions has been conducted with junior high students or first and second-year high school students. Preliminary research indicates a brief, web-based personalized feedback intervention developed for college students (eCHECKUP TO GO) may be a promising program for high school seniors. Although these studies demonstrate positive intervention effects, there is some evidence for greater program efficacy for females in this age group. The current study investigates sex differences in program acceptability of the eCHECKUP TO GO and its relationship to short-term alcohol outcomes among high school seniors (N = 135). Overall, the majority of students reported they found the program to be acceptable (i.e., user-friendly and useful). However, contrary to our hypothesis, results indicated that male students reported significantly higher perceptions of program acceptability than females. Although we did not find sex differences in alcohol outcomes, program user-friendliness was related to reductions in alcohol use for males. The results of this study add to the literature supporting the eCHECKUP TO GO for high school seniors and highlight the importance of program user-friendliness for males. Implications for implementing the program as a school-based intervention are discussed.     

The Impact of Management Education

This article summarizes research findings of a study that examined the effects of a sales management training program conducted at Digital Equipment Corporation. The authors used a typology of training outcomes developed by Kirkpatrick (1959a, 1959b, 1960a, and 1960b) to assess students' satisfaction, learning, and field implementation of skills taught in the class. In addition, they estimated the costs of the program and the actual increase in sales that can be attributed to the implementation of the skills in the workplace. The results indicate that properly conceived and carefully implemented programs have a positive net effect on the corporation's financial position.     

Spectral city: San Francisco as Pacific Rim city and counter‐cultural contado

Abstract

San Francisco, since its global takeoff in the Gold Rush Days and long‐standing trafficking in Bohemian, socialist, queer, and left‐leaning energies in and beyond the Beat era of the 1960s, has a complicated global/local history of trying to disentangle its city‐space and urban imaginary from the Greco‐Roman will‐to‐supremacy that would turn California into a frontier settlement of Asian/Pacific domination and US‐framed empire. Forces of social becoming like the Beats and post‐Beat hippies as well as more experimental authors like Jack Spicer, Maxine Hong Kingston, Frank Chin, and Bob Kaufman helped to forge a different literary‐social vision of San Francisco and the Pacific Rim city as a porous community of transnational innovation and outer‐national becoming. This paper will invoke some literary and film texts from Howl and Tripmaster Monkey to Vertigo to Margaret Cho stand‐up performances as well as some geopolitical studies, such as Gray Brechin’s Imperial San Francisco and City Light Press’s Reclaiming San Francisco to substantiate this double vision of San Francisco as global/local US site of (a) imperial ratification and (b) counter‐orientalist deformation.