The US Response to Bologna: expanding knowledge,first steps of convergence

The roads of incoming information to the US higher education system about the Bologna Process are varied and numerous. They include not only the on-line and traditional trade press, but also conferences of national organisations. Whether anyone remembers much of that information, on the other hand, is an open question, as a limited survey undertaken by the author reveals. The mainstream media are not interested in Bologna, governance authorities are exclusively focused on internal issues, and the US research literature on Bologna, while growing, is still minimal. However, some of the research was picked up by the Lumina Foundation for Education, which sponsored the first US experiment with Bologna-related reforms through a Tuning project involving three state systems and six disciplines; and a second round of this venture should begin soon. Out of this effort came Lumina's sponsorship of the first rounds of discussions concerning the potential for a national degree qualifications framework. This evolution indicates another mode of communication in the US system: a combination of personal relations and private foundations with a bold enough agenda to elevate and move both Bologna knowledge and practice to the centre of US consideration.     

‘Saving the nation's children’:1 teachers,wartime evacuation in England and Wales and the construction of national identity

The teachers in charge[of evacuation]are performing national service of the highest importance. … The successful maintenance of the morale and the steadying of nerves of the civil population will be worth several battles to the nation, and in the early critical days of a war this will depend largely upon the teachers, to whom the children and their parents will look for guidance, inspiration and support.     

DEVIATIONS FROM PREDICTED GROWTH OF ABILITIES FOR MALE AND FEMALE COLLEGE STUDENTS1

126 university seniors were retested with the same battery of precollege aptitude measures administered four years earlier. To evaluate the effect of different educational experiences and orientations, college test performance, corrected for level of high school performance, was correlated with amount of work taken in specific course areas, grades awarded in these areas, and inventory items relating to background and educational philosophy. The results support the notion of greater differentiation in the residual intellectual growth of males. Deviations from predicted growth on the college test performance indices were relatively uncorrelated with each other and more correlated with specific experiences for males than for females.     

Teachers’ academic appraisals and referral decisions: The effect of sharing health information when diabetes is present

Two prior studies showed that giving teachers more information about a student's illness led them to make better attributions about that student's classroom problems and better classroom accommodations. In this study, 235 teachers appraised academic competence and judged whether to seek help or make a referral for a hypothetical student with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). Teachers received one of five levels comprising increasing disease disclosure and classroom‐relevant information about T1DM. Contrary to prior studies, teachers in this study who were given a student's T1DM diagnosis and details about T1DM's classroom risks failed to make better judgments about the student's academic skill levels or to award more accurate grades. Instead, teachers seemed swayed by this student's apparently careless and inconsistent schoolwork, which was presumably disease related. Likewise, better‐informed teachers were no better at selecting accommodations. However, once it was disclosed that the hypothetical student had T1DM, most teachers seemed knowledgeable about the most appropriate potential Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act category for service delivery. Regarding practice issues, school psychologists were rarely selected as a first choice for consultation, and the more information teachers were provided with about T1DM and the student's disease status, the less likely they were to select a school psychologist as a consultant.     

Effects of Discrimination Training on Counselor Trainee Response Choice

The purpose of this study was to assess whether counselor trainees who received training in identifying and producing 10 response types as well as training that emphasized when to use the response types would be more effective in using responding skills than trainees who received only training in identifying and producing response types. Thirty-two master's level counselor trainees from a large midwestern university participated in a three-session training workshop and responded to three dependent measures developed to assess effectiveness in using response types along three dimensions: (a) identification, (b) performance, and (c) evaluation. Statistical analysis indicated significant differences between treatment groups. Treatment seemed to decrease the extent to which counselor trainees questioned the client and expressed their own opinions and values during counseling interviews and increase the extent to which trainees used action-oriented statements aimed at encouraging the client to work on problem solving. Trainees in the treatment group showed a tendency to try out complex response types and to use these more frequently and appropriately. Treatment differences were maintained over time.