Basic skill requirements for selected Army occupational training courses

This study investigated the basic cognitive skills soldiers must possess before entering the Army, skills that are needed for successful completion of entry-level training. Judgments of 126 instructors from 25 military occupational specialties were obtained on 129 candidate skills, which resulted in the identification of 55 basic skills. Factor analysis of these 55 skill items resulted in 11 interpretable factors. Mean scores on the factors were compared across factors and across Army training schools. The results of the study suggest that, for all occupational specialties studied, skills related to the learning process are as crucial as traditional academic skills for successful training course completion. These results have important implications for training for the Army as well as for industry.     

Holdings of peace research journals in academic library collections

Peace movements have shaped national and international culture for decades. Although the Cold War is over, conflict-resolution issues continue to dominate headlines and the news. Peace literature holdings are vital to a relatively young but growing peace and conflict studies curricula. This study uses the list of serials abstracted by Peace Research Abstracts Journal to examine the holdings rates of peace-oriented journal titles in the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member libraries. Holdings rates are examined by library, title, and subject category. Their impact on scholars, researchers, and students is discussed. Findings reveal generally strong holdings rates among ARL libraries. The broad nature of peace research, however, results in greater variation in holdings among certain important sub-topics of the literature.     

The use of self moderated focus groups to gather exploratory data on information beliefs and their impact on information seeking behaviour

The existence of an information belief system is tested for the first time through innovative use of self moderated focus groups. Initial generation of information beliefs was achieved in an open, unpredicted and unbiased way through focus groups. To remove researcher effect and promote informality in discussion, the researcher experimented with a novel approach - self moderated focus groups. A detailed study of 5 groups evaluates their effectiveness in encouraging free and spontaneous discussion and in eliciting unique information ideas or beliefs. Results show that self moderated focus groups encourage naturalistic discourse, take unpredictable directions and are fertile in uncovering unexpected beliefs. Disadvantages include lack of consistency and leader mirroring, with members adopting the style and tone of volunteer moderators. Consideration should be given to gender balance in group composition. The method is recommended where open and free flowing discussion is sought.     

Cheating or cheated? Surviving secondary exit exams in a neoliberal era

Cheating on exams is a rampant and highly developed practice among youth in the Arab world, often involving elaborate networks, advanced technology and adult authorities. Rather than viewing cheating as mere laziness or immorality, this article interrogates the social meanings of cheating by comparing the practices and discourses of cheating on high-stakes high school exit exams – the tawjihi in Jordan and the Baccalauréat in Morocco. Using informal networks to obtain higher grades, and thereby better futures, cheating is one way youth contest the putative meritocracy of the state to reclaim a sense of control over their lives. Ironically, cheaters develop twenty-first century skills of collaboration, networking and creativity outside the school in order to evade the nation’s formal system of educational sorting. We argue that cheating illuminates the declining effectiveness of the public school in the nation-building project and the simultaneous emergence of the outcomes-oriented ‘neoliberal student’.     

Perceptions of the learning environment and associations with cognitive achievement among gifted biology students

This study assessed the perceptions of 146 gifted and 115 non-gifted high school biology students and investigated associations between student perceptions and cognitive achievement. The What Is Happening In this Class? (WIHIC) was used to assess perceptions of actual and preferred learning environments. Data indicated that all students preferred a more favourable environment than the one that they were currently experiencing, but gifted students perceived their actual environment more positively than non-gifted students. Statistically significant associations between the actual learning environment and achievement on a standardised biology test were found for the majority of scales. Teacher Support, Investigation and Equity were all statistically significant independent predictors of student achievement, while Student Cohesiveness had a negative association with achievement. Interviews revealed that students interpreted some WIHIC items differently from how the developers had intended.     

What the West could learn from the East: a reflective analysis

Drawing on Lugones’ ideas of world traveling, Dewey’s notion of education as experience, and Greene’s vision of seeing small/seeing big, this article inquires into lives lived in an Eastern educational milieu with attention reflectively paid to what educators in the West could learn from those in the East. Rather than focusing on mega narratives largely created by policy-makers and derived from accumulations of theory and/or political decision-making, this practical research in the reflective vein takes a ‘big’ look at three ‘small stories’ that emerged in a narrative inquiry we conducted in a Chinese elementary school and imagines their portability to Western educational contexts. Reflective attention is specifically paid to: (1) teaching without words, (2) principal images, and (3) shared responsibility for failure. What these small stories from our narrative inquiry research might disrupt, if introduced to Western educational settings, is especially taken up.