Predicting multicultural effectiveness of international students: the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire

The present study considered the reliability and validity of the 78-item revised version of the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire, a multidimensional instrument aimed at measuring multicultural effectiveness of expatriate employees and students. The questionnaire includes scales for cultural empathy, open-mindedness, emotional stability, social initiative and flexibility. Participants were native and foreign students of an international business school (N=171) in the Netherlands. The MPQ scales appeared to be more strongly predictive of adjustment of international students as compared to native students. Moreover, the instrument was able to explain variance in students’ adjustment beyond self-efficacy.     

Home and preschool learning environments and their relations to the development of early numeracy skills

This study examined the influence of the quality of home and preschool learning environments on the development of early numeracy skills in Germany, drawing on a sample of 532 children in 97 preschools. Latent growth curve models were used to investigate early numeracy skills and their development from the first (average age: 3 years) to the third year (average age: 5 years) of preschool. Several child and family background factors (e.g., gender, maternal education, socioeconomic status), measures of the home learning environment (e.g., literacy- and numeracy-related activities), and measures of preschool structural and process quality (e.g., ECERS-E, ECERS-R) were tested as predictors of numeracy skills and their development. The analyses identified child and family background factors that predicted numeracy skills in the first year of preschool and their development over the three points of measurement—particularly gender, parental native language status (German/other), socioeconomic status, and mother's educational level. The quality of the home learning environment was strongly associated with numeracy skills in the first year of preschool, and this advantage was maintained at later ages. In contrast, the process quality of the preschool was not related to numeracy skills at the first measurement, but was significantly related to development over the period observed. The results underline the differential impact of the two learning environments on the development of numeracy skills. Interaction effects are explored and discussed.     

英军焚毁圆明园事件与“国际法”

1860年10月,英国首席代表额尔金以清政府虐待英法"侨民"致死"违犯国际公法"为借口,悍然下令侵华英军劫掠并焚毁了圆明园等中国皇家园林。查证史实,可知当时并未形成世界意义上的"国际法",美国人惠顿的法学著作《万国公法》尚未传入中国,清政府也未签署任何有关战争的国际法文件。若就事论理,指出清廷违反人道主义是必要的,但责难清政府违反国际法却是没有道理的。反过来看,拥有国际法观念的英法军队对身受重伤的中方非战斗人员清宫太监,不但未进行必要的医疗救治,反而加戴镣铐,实施虐待,这种行径与他们标榜的国际法是相违背的。英法军队焚毁圆明园,劫掠文物,是违反他们自己的"国际法"的,是毁灭人类文明的野蛮犯罪。     

上海合作组织的发展路径

文章提出上合组织发展的5条路径,认为,未来上海合作组织的发展,应适当扩大安全功能,在经济上重点突破,恰当处理与欧亚联盟的关系,并解决好扩大问题。     

试论自我导向学习与学习型组织

随着终身学习思潮的深入人心,作为成人主要学习方式的自我导向学习,以及现代化组织方式的学习型组织开始越来越受到重视。然而对于这两者之间的联系却少有学者问津,此文尝试着将自我导向学习与学习型组织联系起来,从已有的文献中试图探寻二者的关系。     

The health and wellbeing of international students at an Australian university

A representative sample of undergraduate and postgraduate international students at a large Australian university (n=979, 64% females) completed a mail-back survey of their health and wellbeing. Most students evaluated their current and previous physical and mental health positively. Health-related risk practices such as unprotected sexual activity, drug use, smoking and gambling, were reported by few students. There was little change in health or risk behaviours since coming to Australia and few changes that were health compromising. Few demographic or situational variables, including age and gender, had a significant impact on students' wellbeing. This study has revealed that few international students find the experience of studying in an overseas country detrimental to their wellbeing. Nevertheless, for those students who encounter difficulties or are at increased risk of health-compromising outcomes, we must ensure better delivery of health promotion education, and access to, and use of, available counselling and health services.

Establishing a Competence Profile for the Role of Student-centred Teachers in Higher Education in Belgium

The increasing importance of constructivism in higher education has brought about a shift in pedagogy from a focus on the teacher to a focus on the student. This has important implications for teaching and assessment. A student-centred pedagogy implies a different role for the teacher. What exactly does student-centred teaching require from teachers’ actual teaching practice? What is expected from them in order to teach in a student-centred way? It is in order to respond to these questions that this research project has been carried out establishing a core competence profile of student-centred teachers in higher education. Qualitative data were collected by means of semi-structured in-depth interviews with teachers from different institutions for higher education in Belgium, known for their student-centred way of teaching. This research method is innovative compared to the methods used for existing competence lists in the literature, which were usually developed on the basis of conversations with pedagogical experts. By exploring practice and having teachers participate in the development of a competence list, the acceptance of a competence profile is much higher. The result of the project is a validated competence profile which takes into account the critiques on existing competence lists. The competence profile provides a further insight in the functioning of teachers within a student-centred pedagogy and can be used as a starting point for the educational development of teachers within this pedagogy.     

引文国际化对论文被引的影响研究

[目的/意义]在学术交流日趋国际化的背景下,本文拟探索引文国际化与被引量之间的关系,力图回答良好的国际视野是否有助于提升论文的学术影响力这一学界普遍关注的问题。[研究设计/方法]以社会科学为研究对象,选取管理学、图书情报学和新闻传播学的181,406篇CSSCI论文为研究样本,采用相关分析、非参数检验与回归分析的方法研究引用外文期刊论文的数量、学术质量、学科领域、时效性对论文被引量的影响。[结论/发现]在控制了文献类型、期刊声誉等若干可能影响论文被引量的因素后,发现样本论文的引文国际化水平对其被引量具有显著的正向影响。具体而言,引用外文期刊论文的数量越多、平均学术质量越高、学科专属度越高、平均时效性越强的论文具有更高的被引量。[创新/价值]证实了国际视野有助于提升中文社科论文的学术影响力,并提出了有针对性的建议。     

Improving the Comparability and Local Usefulness of International Assessments: A Look Back and A Way Forward

Over time international large-scale assessments have grown in terms of number of studies, cycles, and participating countries, many of which are a heterogeneous mix of economies, languages, cultures, and geography. This heterogeneity has meaningful consequences for comparably measuring both achievement and non-achievement constructs, such as social and emotional skills. In this paper we propose one way to directly incorporate country-specific differences into the methods used to construct background scales. We use research that demonstrates data quality issues in international assessment and the degree to which these issues can impact inferences. Our proposed solution incorporates innovations that have been developed for achievement measures but have not been applied to background scales. We demonstrate this possible solution with PISA 2012 data.     

Understanding business interests in international large-scale student assessments: a media analysis of The Economist,Financial Times,and Wall Street Journal

The media analysis is situated in the larger body of studies that explore the varied reasons why different policy actors advocate for international large-scale student assessments (ILSAs) and adds to the research on the fast advance of the global education industry. The analysis of The Economist, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal covers publications on ‘PISA’, ‘TIMSS’, and related search items over the period 1996–2016. The three media outlets vary in terms of ILSA reporting. The Economist and Financial Times tend to focus on PISA, whereas the Wall Street Journal pays greater attention to TIMSS than PISA. The content analysis of 59 articles yields interesting results about how the business-oriented readership of the three media outlets frames public education and why it sees education as a profitable business opportunity. The three most common narratives, reflecting the business logic, are the following: (i) public education is in crisis; (ii) there is no correlation between spending and education outcome; and (iii) school accountability, teacher performance, and decentralisation represent the most effective policies to improve the quality of education. Drawing on these three common narratives, the financial media outlets present a particular vision of how to improve education; a vision in which the private sector is supposed to play a major role.