The State of NCME: Remembering the Past, Looking to the Future

What are the roots of NCME? What were our initial goals and how well have we attained them? Are we drifting away from our practitioner orientation? What should be our policy on important matters in educational practice and our role in sociopolitical issues in educational measurement?     

Long waves in the geography of innovation: The rise and decline of regional clusters of creativity over time

We explain the rise and decline of regional clusters of creativity over time. We argue that this dynamic is the result of the interplay of individually rational decision-making processes with collective externalities of unplanned social encounters; migration to particular places at particular times interacts with a preference to engage with similar others. This interplay leads to the rise and subsequent decline of opportunities for encounters between people who operate in different domains, a basic requirement for radical innovative change. The consequent decline of formerly innovative regions creates opportunities for new innovative regions to emerge. We test this theory using three independently curated datasets. The first includes the geocoded places and years of the births and deaths of 124,860 notable individuals who lived in Europe between 1000 and 1900 CE, used to measure opportunities for domain-diverse encounters in regions and regions’ time-varying attractiveness in global mobility networks. The second and third datasets consist of the geocoded locations and founding years of 3,165 Catholic monasteries and of 16,596 publishing houses. We use these organizational innovations as robust, independent indicators for a region's capacity to foster incremental and radical change. Our paper aims to open a broader social network perspective on the rise and decline of regional clusters of creativity over time.     

The Transition Lynchpin: The Voices of Individuals with Disabilities Who Attended a Community College Transition Program

Nearly 60% of students with disabilities who attend postsecondary institutions attend community colleges. Individuals with disabilities paralleling their peers without disabilities need the postsecondary education opportunity to develop vocational skills, the time to mature, and the experience of living with others. A transition program, a K–12 and community college partnership, was developed to support students in this mission. A narrative inquiry methodology was utilized to understand the community college experience of students with disabilities in a transition program. Findings indicate that the program benefited the individuals. It did this by supporting completion of a vocational program leading to gainful employment and as a transition into adult roles and status. The program also provided opportunities that enhanced the individuals' self-esteem, and it facilitated the individuals becoming more independent and responsible.     

Do University policies make a difference?

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the technical universities have been more successful in facilitating the spillover and commercialization of knowledge. We compare the impact of technical and general universities on the performance of knowledge-based firms. Based on a unique data set consisting of publicly held high technology firms, the empirical evidence suggests that, in fact, firm performance is not influenced by the type of university. Technical universities do not have a differential impact on firm performance from more general universities.     

Schulformwechsel im zweigliedrigen Schulsystem

This study focuses on students who change from the academic to the non-academic school track after grade 7 (probationary year) in Berlin. We examined which individual student characteristics (e.?g., performance, school biography, family background) predict school change after the probationary year. We were particularly interested as to whether there are secondary effects of social background, after controlling for differences in performance. Our analyses were based on data from a study which included a whole cohort of school track changers (N?=?754) who were compared with students that remained at the academic track (N?=?1470). In order to predict the change of school type, multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed. Results revealed significant differences between both groups regarding all observed characteristics. Performance-related characteristics were the best predictors of track change. After controlling for these characteristics, no further significant effects for other predictors were observable (i.?e., no secondary effects of social background were present).     

Game interruptions in elite soccer

Abstract

The objectives of the study were to analyse game interruptions of league soccer in detail and the tactical use of game interruptions. Sixteen matches of a German first league soccer team were observed. An observational system was designed to assess interruption types, score, duration of interruption, location of interruption, time of interruption and number of occurrences. Results showed that there is an average of 108 interruptions per match. Throw-ins (40) and free kicks (33) were most frequent. Goal kicks (17), corner kicks (10), substitutions (4), and kick offs (3) occurred less often. Drop balls, penalties, and injuries occurred least often. For 38% of the total match time observed, matches were halted. The mean duration of running and interrupted match parts were 32.1 s and 18.7 s, respectively. The analysis showed significant differences concerning the influence of the location of interruption, score, and time of interruption on the duration of different interruption types (P < 0.05). The results of the study showed the tactical use of game interruptions during league soccer matches, e.g. goal kicks of the leading team take longer towards the end of the match. Examining game interruptions has turned out to be a valuable source of information adding to our knowledge of soccer. We have shown evidence that the durations of many interruptions serve tactical purposes, a well-known hypothesis in practice.     

Strategic escapes: Negotiating motivations of personal growth and instrumental benefits in the decision to study abroad

Studying abroad is one way in which university students can develop personal capital and distinguish themselves in an increasingly congested graduate labour market. Data show that studying abroad indeed provides employment benefits, with evidence pointing to even greater positive effects for students from low socio‐economic status backgrounds. Focusing on a group of Canadian students about to embark on a study exchange, we find no evidence that career‐instrumental reasons played a role in participants’ decisions to study abroad. Rather, they sought personal growth and escape from the everyday frustrations of being an undergraduate student. We argue, however, that these motivations nonetheless have to be understood as strategic, since going on a study exchange abroad allows students to escape temporarily, while ‘staying in the game’ of becoming credentialed at home. We discuss the role of socio‐economic status, as well as the policy implications of these findings.     

Chunyun versus lockdown

Across the world,the news of COVID-19 was followed by 'lockdowns' that lim-ited societal activity and mobility to a greater or lesser degree.In China,how-ever,t...     

Do tuition fees affect enrollment behavior? Evidence from a ‘natural experiment’ in Germany

This paper uses the introduction of tuition fees in seven of the sixteen German states in 2007 as a natural experiment to identify the effects of tuition prices on enrollment probabilities. Based on information on enrollment decisions of the entire population of high-school graduates between 2002 and 2008, I find a negative effect of tuition fees on enrollment behavior. The effect is larger than in existing studies for European countries, but of a similar magnitude as effects identified with U.S. data. A potential spill-over effect of the policy intervention to the comparison group is accounted for by using the estimation results to calibrate a structural model of the enrollment decision.