Using Focus Groups in the Marketing of Higher Education

No abstract available for this article.     

应聘者公平知觉影响因素研究新视角

公平知觉是指应聘者对甄选过程中人员选拔公平性的感知。在组织公平框架下,影响应聘者公平知觉的因素主要有:选拔之前准备性活动、提供的相关信息和材料,测验的方式类型以及施测的手段、内容,选拔之后的结果等。公平期望是应聘者对将要参加的选拔的公平性的预期。公平期望与公平知觉之间呈显著正相关,同时公平期望在选拔前就已经存在,这为提高应聘者的公平知觉提供了一个早期干预的机会。     

民族师范院校实习带队教师评选模式构建——以甘肃民族师范学院为例

通过对我校实习带队教师的评选过程进行研究,从实习带队教师的评选方及各评选方所占评分比例、各评选方的评选依据及各评选依据所占的评分比例等方面构建了实习带队教师的量化评选模式,以期优化、量化、公正化优秀实习带队教师的评选过程,更好地发挥实习带队教师的作用,提高教育实习质量。     

Reducing Children's Littering on a Nature Trail

Abstract

The personal experience of place is a fundamental step toward understanding our environment. Environmental education should foster an exploration of the place within which we each live. A sense of place, though, is not sufficient. We must cherish our place in our environment as home, and we should act to protect and improve it as we would our home—for indeed it is. Stories provide a psychologically powerful tool for understanding our environment and our relationships with it. Environmental educators should make good use of place, home, and story in their teaching.     

Quality of assessment of prior learning (APL) in university programmes: perceptions of candidates,tutors and assessors

Formal diplomas and certificates have been accepted as proof that students may receive exemption for parts of their educational programme. Nowadays, though, it is socially desirable that informal and non-formal learning experiences are also recognised. Assessment of prior learning (APL) addresses this issue. In APL, the candidate's knowledge, skills or competences required in informal and non-formal learning are measured against a standard to determine whether they match the learning objectives. Although APL is frequently used in workplaces and vocational education, it is practised less in universities, and research is lacking in this context. This study aims to evaluate the first APL procedure in an academic computer science programme, and an adjusted APL procedure in an educational science masters programme. This is done from the perspective of the APL candidates, tutors and assessors, using the theoretical framework by Baartman et al. (2006). The computer science participants comprised 23 candidates from a police software company, four tutors and four assessors. From educational science, nine candidates, two tutors and two assessors participated. The results show that the APL procedure in educational science is viewed significantly more positively than that in computer science; further, the computer science assessors differ considerably from the other participants in their perceptions relating to the quality criterion ‘cognitive complexity’. Explanations for the difference between the two programmes are discussed in this article and assessor and tutor training highly recommended.     

‘We are like dictionaries,Miss, you can look things up in us’: evaluating child-centred research methods

Research concerning children is often presented with only a brief comment on the research methods adopted. This paper takes a ‘behind the scenes’ view and I discuss my adoption of a non-hierarchical ‘least adult role’ adapted from Mandell's work in 1991 to undertake qualitative research in the sensitive area of children's multicultural awareness in two high-proportion minority ethnic schools and two schools with a predominantly white intake. I discuss my approach as a ‘traveller’ rather than a ‘miner’ and the use of jelly beans and Bean Sheet to gauge the children's perceptions of their multicultural awareness. The value placed on the role of the child in the research design and implementation is examined, and I evaluate the advantages and limitations of adopting such child-centred approaches for the teacher researcher.     

Science Teacher Attitudes Toward Inquiry-Based Teaching and Learning

The purpose of this study was to determine teachers’ attitudes, values, and beliefs about inquiry. The participants of this study were 275 middle grade and secondary science teachers from four districts in North Carolina. Issues such as class size, accountability, curricular demands, and administrative support are perceived as constraints, impeding the use of inquiry. These are the issues that must be effectively dealt with in the professional education and professional development of all science teachers.     

Student perceptions of hidden messages in teacher written feedback

Students take away a variety of messages from teachers’ responses to their writing, although not all the information conveyed is explicit or related to the work at hand. In fact, both the content of this feedback and the ways they respond can lead students to interpret their tutors’ beliefs about their subject, about learning, and about the value of literacy in their disciplines. Drawing on a series of interviews with 24 first and second year students at a Hong Kong university, this paper seeks to identify what these messages are and the consequences they can have for students’ attitudes to their field of study, to disciplinary writing, to learning and to teacher–student relationships.