This study examines the relationship between principals’ leadership and student achievement. Based on the Programme for International Student Assessment 2015 United States data, a two-level...

This paper examines the International Student Competition on Place Brand­ing and Mediterranean Diet held in Fermo, Italy, in the context of the devel­opment of rural areas. This one-week food-related educational programme was organised by the University of Macerata’s Department of Education, Cultural Heritage and Tourism in collaboration with The Piceno Laboratory on the Mediterranean Diet, a local network of public and private stakehold­ers committed to the promotion of Fermo area as a touristic destination based on traditional gastronomy. (...) The aim of this study was to understand how and to what extent such food-related educational events may con­tribute to providing students with the knowledge, expertise and soft skills needed for careers in the food tourism sector. Of interest also was how such events may benefit the development of rural areas. The ISC was founded in 2016 and continued in 2017, 2018 and 2019. In order to assess students’ perceptions about the experience, specifically regarding what they felt they had learned about food tourism, and which soft skills they had acquired or honed, 13 students who participated in the 2017 event were interviewed for a qualitative study. Moreover, the authors drew upon information gleaned from interactions with students and teachers, as well as with several important actors of the local food and tourism sector, in­cluding tourism and hospitality entrepreneurs and representatives of gov­ernment agencies, with whom they collaborated in the context of planning, running and evaluating the events. The findings show that the ISC can provide students with a good general understanding of the territory and practical knowledge about place branding and food tourism. In terms of career preparation, the combination of fieldwork activities with traditional lectures and group activities was particularly fruitful in promoting soft skills such as communication, efficient use of social media, teamwork, problem-solving and decision making. (shrink)

A common feature of contemporary policy making is the sharing and adaptation of policies from other countries. As neoliberal globalisation continues to impact on the development of policy, such practices are increasingly commonplace. This article considers the current phenomenon of ‘policy borrowing’ with reference to the use of data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the 2010 Schools White Paper The Importance of Teaching. The article also traces the origins of policy borrowing and (...) shows what philosophy of education can bring to its discourse. (shrink)

This article gives a critique of the methodology of OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). It is argued that PISA is invalidated by the fact that the methodology chosen does not constitute an adequate operationalisation of the question of inquiry. Therefore, contrary to the claims of PISA, PISA is not an assessment of the ‘knowledge and skills for life’ of students, but only of ‘knowledge and skills in assessment situations’. Even this latter form (...) of assessment is not fully reliable, however, because of problems at the level of concrete test items and because of an inherent confusion of relative and absolute evaluation. (shrink)

Background: Community-based education (CBE) involves educating the head (cognitive), heart (affective), and the hand (practical) by utilizing tools that enable us to broaden and interrogate our value systems. This article reports on the use of virtue ethics (VE) theory for understanding the principles that create, maintain and sustain a socially accountable community placement programme for undergraduate medical students. Our research questions driving this secondary analysis were; what are the goods which are internal to the successful practice of CBE in (...) medicine, and what are the virtues that are likely to promote and sustain them? -/- Methods: We conducted a secondary theoretically informed thematic analysis of the primary data based on MacIntyre’s virtue ethics theory as the conceptual framework. -/- Results: Virtue ethics is an ethical approach that emphasizes the role of character and virtue in shaping moral behavior; when individuals engage in practices (such as CBE), goods internal to those practices (such as a collaborative attitude) strengthen the practices themselves, but also augment those individuals’ virtues, and that of their community (such as empathy). We identified several goods that are internal to the practice of CBE and accompanying virtues as important for the development, implementation and sustainability of a socially accountable community placement programme. A service-oriented mind-set, a deep understanding of community needs, a transformed mind, and a collaborative approach emerged as goods internal to the practice of a socially accountable CBE. The virtues needed to sustain the identified internal goods included empathy and compassion, connectedness, accountability, engagement [sustained relationship], cooperation, perseverance, and willingness to be an agent of change. -/- Conclusion: This study found that MacIntyre’s virtue ethics theory provided a useful theoretical lens for understanding the principles that create, maintain and sustain CBE practice. (shrink)

To explore the impact of academic burden on the physical and mental health of primary school students, combined with the results of the Programme for International Student Assessment report in 2018, the relationship among the development of mathematical literacy, mathematics academic burden, and the physical and mental health of primary school students is studied. First, the relationship between mathematical literacy and mathematics anxiety is analyzed, and related influencing factors and measurement methods of mathematics anxiety are introduced. (...) A questionnaire is then designed for primary school students’ mathematical stress, and the reliability and validity of the designed questionnaire are tested. Finally, a questionnaire survey is conducted on students, parents, and teachers in the third, fourth, and fifth grades of three standardized public primary schools. The results of the questionnaire survey show that students, teachers, and parents have a general understanding of the mathematics academic burden of primary school students at this stage. A total of 70% of teachers believe that primary school students have a heavy mathematics burden; 50% of parents think that primary school students are under heavy academic stress; 70% of primary school students believe that the heavy mathematics burden leads to reduced sleep time and extracurricular activities, which has a serious impact on the physical and mental health of primary school students. This research provides a reference for improving the current balance between education and students’ physical and mental health in China. (shrink)

This study examines the Programme for International Student Assessment, one of the most influential tools of global education reform discourses in the 21st century. The study focuses on the governing role of statistical data in the discourse constructed by the international comparative assessment, referring to the global educational governance of the OECD. Disturbingly, the systematic collection and distribution of data does not merely quantify student achievement. Rather, students and participating countries are also qualified (...) and classified. Here, OECD’s PISA statistics act as a governing technology enabling the comparisons; through PISA’s statistics, the OECD has largely fostered the test-driven education reform trends worldwide. In this study, statistical data are examined as political instruments visualizing intangible concepts, constructing definitions of good practice and improvement, and fabricating the individuals whose knowledge and skills are normalized. In conclusion, it is necessary to rethink the new sociopolitical instrument – PISA’s statistics – not as a master rationale to reform the educational system of each country, but as a mere reference point based on the system’s distinctiveness. (shrink)

There are indications of a positive trend in education. International comparative investigations on academic achievement (Programme for International Student Assessment, PISA) and longitudinal studies on life courses prove the need for and the importance of children’s high intellectual knowledge. At the same time, new research initiatives and projects comply with the demand that aesthetic/cultural education1 be “more” than a marginal complement to intellectual education and instead be “fundamental for thinking and acting.”2 Aesthetic education is to (...) provide soft skills, to shape children’s characters, and to improve their social competences, representing “the Other of school.”3 The text below deals with poetry for .. (shrink)

This paper explores “the peopling of Europe through data practices” in relation to standardized testing of students in Denmark. Programme for International Student Assessment is a central component of Danish and European education infrastructures. In Denmark, mediocre PISA results spurred the introduction of national testing. With inspiration from Michel Foucault’s notion of biopolitics, this paper analyzes how complementary Danish national test assessment scales make up population objects and student subjects and how these scales are (...) aligned with European and transnational standards. A norm scale, standardized against the European Credit Transfer System grading scale, enacts a population whose performance can be tracked over time. A criteria scale introduces categories describing skills and enacts a moving student subject whose progression can be tracked. This paper argues that the three assessment scales enact the student population as bound to the nation and as simultaneously constituted in relation to transnational European categories and imaginaries of competition. As part of this, this paper discusses how the national test and PISA are used to single out students of non-European background, anticipated to be low PISA achievers and nonparticipants in a European knowledge economy. (shrink)

The OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is increasingly depended upon by education policy makers to provide reliable measures of their country's education system against international benchmarks. PISA attempts to provide efficient, scientific and technical means to develop educational policies which achieve optimal outcomes (Berg & Timmermans, 2000, p. 31). This kind of scientific evidence is seen by policy makers as being free of prejudice and ideology. Science is expected to represent the truth, state (...) universal facts and make predictions. Thus PISA seeks to rank countries' performances, work out future scenarios and offer policy direction. By what means does PISA gain knowledge and speak with confidence about diverse cultures and distant nations? How does it acquire a ‘voice from nowhere’ (Haraway, 1988; Suchman, 2000), and become a modern-day Oracle that countries might consult for policy advice? Modelled on early actor-network accounts of laboratory life, this ethnography traces how PISA knowledge comes to be made, guided by interview data with two ‘insiders’ in the ‘PISA laboratory’. It traces the translations and the circulating reference that turn PISA into a ‘centre of calculation’. It highlights how human and non-human entities are imbricated in the assembling of scientific facts and argues for a suspension of the divide between ‘science’ and ‘politics’. In the process, the paper offers an empirical instantiation of how some concepts from actor-network theory may be applied in the field of education policy, and ponders the implications of such an understanding for evidence based policy making. (shrink)

The study examined the impact of students’ absolute age-position at the time of testing by grade level and gender on their achieved level of mathematics, reading and science performance. An analysis was conducted based on a sample of 11,500 15-year-old pupils in the United Arab Emirates who participated in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment 2012 study. In support of an absolute age-position effect it was found that the youngest age-at-test student grouping demonstrated significantly (...) lower levels of mathematics, reading and science performance than their older peers. It was also shown that grade level had a significant influence on the demonstration of functional knowledge by same-aged students. Lastly, the female students attained significantly higher levels of mathematics, reading and science performance than their male counterparts. (shrink)

The present study critically evaluates whether school leadership influences student learning homogenously regardless of school contexts. It examined relationships between four principal leadership variables (envisioning, instructional management, promoting professional development, empowerment) and two types of student outcomes (enjoyment in learning science, science achievement,) in different school contexts (in terms of the availability of science resources, quality of science teachers, and school socioeconomic status (SES)). The sample comprised 248,620 students and 9,370 principals in 35 developed countries who participated in (...) the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015. Latent profile analysis (LPA) showed that schools operated in three types of school contexts with different levels of science resources, proportion of quality science teachers, and school SES. There were also differences in the pattern of leadership practices across the three types of school contexts. Three-level hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) showed that among the four leadership variables, only instructional management was positively associated with students’ enjoyment of science in schools with less science resources and quality science teachers. Therefore, instructional management had compensatory effects for students in less-endowed schools. In contrast, principal leadership related to envisioning, teacher professional development, and empowerment was not positively related to students’ science learning in all three school contexts. (shrink)

This study examined the effects of opportunity to learn or the content coverage in mathematics on student mathematics anxiety, problem-solving performance, and mathematics performance. The pathways examining the influences of OTL on student problem-solving performance and mathematics performance via mathematics anxiety were also tested. A sample of 1,676 students from Shanghai-China, and a sample of 1,511 students from the United States who participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment 2012 were used for the (...) analyses. The results from multilevel models and path models supported our hypotheses that OTL not only showed significant direct effects on student mathematics anxiety, problem-solving performance, and mathematics performance, but also presented indirect effects on student problem-solving performance and mathematics performance via mathematics anxiety in both Shanghai-China and United States, controlling for student gender, grade, and socioeconomic status. The practical implications of the current results were also discussed. (shrink)

Since the founding of the University of Limburg (1974), in The Netherlands, an innovative medical curriculum has been guided by educational principles of problem-orientation, continuous assessment, student initiative and attitude development. The teaching of medical ethics was built into the preclinical curriculum from the start. However, the clinical years remained largely unaffected, and only recently has an effort been made to extend the educational philosophy to this more or less traditional part of medical education. Within this context, an (...) experiment of clinical ethics teaching was introduced in the Obstetrics and Gynaecology (Ob/Gyn) clerkships. The objectives, methods and results of this experimental programme are described in this paper. The success of the teaching is based on three features of the programme: 1) its student-centred approach; 2) the programme is designed in a way similar to regular patient conferences; 3) the programme is taught by a team consisting of both clinician and ethicist. Before starting a longitudinal programme of ethics teaching during the clinical years, it proved very helpful to experiment with a well designed and evaluated pilot programme. (shrink)

Analyzing students’ internal cognitive-motivational appraisals and achievement emotions is of pivotal importance for educational outcomes and student individual wellbeing, yet little is shown about their associations with teacher autonomy support. This study investigates the relationship between perceived teacher autonomy support and reading achievement by addressing mediating influences of control and value-related constructs, i.e., reading self-efficacy, meaning in life, and reading enjoyment. Multiple mediation modeling was adopted to test the proposed model with carrying out a total of 12,058 students from (...) 361 schools in China in the Programme for International Student Assessment 2018 reading database. The results elucidated that student-perceived teacher autonomy support is significantly positively related to adolescents’ reading outcomes by fostering internal control and value appraisals and academic enjoyment. These current findings confirm the positive correlation between teacher autonomy support and adolescents’ motivational and emotional factors, providing significant practical implications for educators to adopt various teaching strategies to enhance adolescents’ self-efficacy, intrinsic values, and positive emotions. (shrink)

The OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is increasingly depended upon by education policy makers to provide reliable measures of their country's education system against international benchmarks. PISA attempts to provide efficient, scientific and technical means to develop educational policies which achieve optimal outcomes (Berg & Timmermans, 2000, p. 31). This kind of scientific evidence is seen by policy makers as being free of prejudice and ideology. Science is expected to represent the truth, state (...) universal facts and make predictions. Thus PISA seeks to rank countries' performances, work out future scenarios and offer policy direction. By what means does PISA gain knowledge and speak with confidence about diverse cultures and distant nations? How does it acquire a ‘voice from nowhere’ (Haraway, 1988; Suchman, 2000), and become a modern‐day Oracle that countries might consult for policy advice? Modelled on early actor‐network accounts of laboratory life, this ethnography traces how PISA knowledge comes to be made, guided by interview data with two ‘insiders’ in the ‘PISA laboratory’. It traces the translations and the circulating reference that turn PISA into a ‘centre of calculation’. It highlights how human and non‐human entities are imbricated in the assembling of scientific facts and argues for a suspension of the divide between ‘science’ and ‘politics’. In the process, the paper offers an empirical instantiation of how some concepts from actor‐network theory may be applied in the field of education policy, and ponders the implications of such an understanding for evidence based policy making. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Musik–Vielfalt–Integration–Inklusion: Musikdidaktik für die eine Schule [Music–Diversity–Inclusion–Integration: A New Philosophy of Music Education for an Inclusive School] by Irmgard MerktBeatrice McNamaraIrmgard Merkt, Musik–Vielfalt–Integration–Inklusion: Musikdidaktik für die eine Schule [Music–Diversity–Inclusion–Integration: A New Philosophy of Music Education for an Inclusive School] (Regensburg: Conbrio, 2019)Irmgard Merkt, a German music education scholar, is a pioneer of intercultural music education with regard to the development of the concept Schnittstellensansatz, literally “interface approach,” as (...) an initial concept of intercultural music education in the 1980s. Her book Musik–Vielfalt–Integration–Inklusion: Musikdidaktik für die eine Schule [Music–Diversity–Inclusion–Integration: A New Philosophy of Music Education for an Inclusive School] is a new philosophy of music education for schools, in which children and young people with and without disabilities as well as children and young people from the most diverse milieus and cultural backgrounds share a learning space.1 Merkt advocates for a broad concept of inclusion that refers both to the inclusion of children with different skills and abilities on a physiological and psychological level along with the integration of pupils from different cultures of origin. The overriding goal for the author is recategorization,2 which makes the terms “common school,” “school for all” or “inclusive music instruction” obsolete and which allows pupils to attend a kind of school and a kind of music education [End Page 187] that is inherently inclusive. Merkt even goes as far as promoting the dissolution of subject-specific margins of music education and establishing an omnipresence of music in everyday school life instead.3 However, I think it should be pointed out that completely dissolving or dismissing music education into interdisciplinarity or integrating music education into subject groups such as Aesthetic Education,4 would be compliant with attempts made on the level of educational policy in order to reduce the quantity of qualified music teaching within the curriculum.5 Nevertheless, Merkt’s critique of the German school system is nothing short of appropriate in view of the prevalent system-immanent character of exclusion as the recent Programme for International Student Assessment-report of 2018 reveals.6 Furthermore, it is essential to draw conclusions as to the extent to which music instruction can do justice to the diversity of the student body, both on an integrative and on an inclusive level.The first chapter of Musik–Vielfalt–Integration–Inklusion offers an overview of past and present viewpoints on the topic of inclusion. Ensuing, the second chapter outlines the evolution of music education and teacher training in view of students with special needs. Chapter Three focuses on integration, Chapter Four traces the lines of development in the field of intercultural music pedagogy, while in Chapter Five Merkt advocates an encompassing culture of recognition in which educators, learners, and different music cultures are acknowledged to an equal extent. In Chapter Six the author delves into the very beginning of music and its coincidence with the evolution of humanity from homo sapiens to homo musicus through the lens of science and musicology. The seventh chapter of the book constitutes a synopsis of the main ideas which are then amalgamated into the concept of “Mit einer Frage um die Welt” [around the world with one question].A key tenet of Merkt’s publication is decategorization. The term inclusion, going back to its Latin origin of inclusio or includere is bound to the existence of its antonym exclusion. Despite endeavors nowdays to reverse the term’s meaning from reclusion to all-embracing,7 efforts to establish inclusion would not be necessary without exclusionary preconditions. On a terminological level, the expression inclusion implicates that there is an existing dualism between an inclusive or enclosed in-group and an exclusive or excluded out-group. This close and inextricable linkage between the existence of inclusion and exclusion, shows the importance of Merkt’s endeavor of highlighting efforts and development of decategorization, both on a terminological and legislative level, as well as on the ideological level. She is portraying concepts of thinking and acting in view of disability as a recurring process of progression and regression in reference to exclusionary... (shrink)

The validity of assessment programs is increasingly important in higher education. Existing approaches to assessment are problematic because they eitherfail to provide timely feedback or have suspect measurement issues. We propose a feed-forward assessment model to help overcome these two limitations oftraditional assessment approaches.

Mathematics achievement in different education systems around the world is assessed periodically in the Programme for International Student Assessment. PISA is deemed to yield robust...

The present paper gives an overview of the reflections of and reactions to publishing the results of the first wave of the OECD study Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in the Czech Republic and in Germany. The choice of these two countries enables us to document how the same results could be perceived very differently in diverse country contexts and could lead to a different reaction from policy-makers. In spite of large reforms and numerous policy (...) measures being adopted in Germany in reaction to the PISA results, compared with no response from policy-makers in the Czech Republic, it is argued, that in both countries policy-makers failed to tackle the major problem of their educational systems—its selective nature. In the final section we discuss various mis(uses) of PISA and its supranational and global character influencing local policies. (shrink)

Introduction: Globally, vitamin D deficiency is one of the most common deficiencies, affecting nearly half the world's population. The objective of this survey was to assess and compare the knowledge about vitamin D and the perceived state of health in Emirati and international tourist female students in Dubai, UAE. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study that took place in universities in Dubai, UAE. This survey consisted of 17 multiple choice questions. The first part of the survey assessed levels of (...) supplementation, diet and UV exposure. Another section evaluated the participants’ self-assessed state of health regarding vitamin D testing, symptoms related to vitamin D deficiency and general welbeing. The collected data were statistically analyzed using SPSS statistics for windows version 26.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL). Statistical significance was set at P<0.05. Results: 105 respondents were Emiratis and 65 were international students. The average age was 21, with an average BMI 23.3. Almost one-third of each group reported using Vitamin D supplements once weekly. The majority of both groups reported rarely getting tanned. Almost all participants reported regular consumption of Vitamin-D rich foods. In both groups, more than half reported consuming milk and cheese regularly and up to one-third reported consuming fish in a regular manner. Although more than half of the students rated their health as good; more than two-thirds reported experiencing muscle pain; only half reported having their blood Vitamin D levels measured once; half reported experiencing problems with concentration and more than three-quarters reported experiencing bad mood in the past month. The prevalence of these symptoms was almost similar across different categories of vitamin D supplementation, tanning habits, dietary intake, or nationality. No statistically significant differences were noted between the 2 groups. Conclusion: more Emirati students were aware of the association between vitamin D and osteoporosis than International tourist students (40% vs. 21.9%, respectively; p<0.05). On the other hand, both groups had lower knowledge about the relationship between vitamin D deficiency and depression, Rheumatoid Arthritis and Hypertension, and the optimal vitamin D level; however, no statistically significant differences were noted regarding this knowledge of Emiratis and international students. (shrink)

A common feature of contemporary policymaking is the sharing and adaptation of policies from other countries. As neo-liberal globalisation continues to impact on the development of policy, such practices are increasingly commonplace. This article considers the current phenomenon of ‘policy borrowing’ with reference to the use of data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the 2010 Schools White Paper The Importance of Teaching. The article also traces the origins of policy borrowing and shows (...) what philosophy of education can bring to its discourse. (shrink)

This study examines the influence of the COVID-19 crisis on academic expectations among international students from north-western China. According to past studies, academic expectations are multifaceted, making it critical to test the methods employed to assess this fundamental trait. The outbreak of COVID-19 has resulted in various significant changes in education, which have shifted from traditional to online or mixed formats. As a result, examining international students' academic expectations along with their interactions with adopted technologies is a topic (...) that addresses the current situation and issues. A mixed approach, comprising two different instruments, was followed to achieve this primary objective. While a survey with a questionnaire was undertaken with 551 international students, divided into two groups, ten students were interviewed during and after the lockdowns. The findings revealed that COVID-19 had a significant impact on the academic expectations of students as well as many elements such as training for employment, personal and social development, international student mobility, motivation, social pressure, and social interaction with the help of supporting technologies. In terms of gender, men outperformed women in motivation, social interaction, training for employment, and personal and social development factors. Similarly, as per the grade variable, the same higher trend was seen in postgraduates. Based on these findings, a set of recommendations was put forward. In the future, technology will be helpful in China's educational sector, such as online group collaboration, open education, managing student retention, and supervising teachers' recruitment. (shrink)

The Faculty of Law at Masaryk University in Brno, the Czech Re- public, offers several fields of studies, one of them being the three-year Bachelor’s degree programme of International Trade Law. This programme includes two semesters of English for specific purposes which the students take in their first year of studies. However, as the programme is offered as a part time study, there are only 10 lessons of English taught within two days per semester. Preparing a (...) course which would develop the students’ language abilities and skills in the international trade law environment appears to be rather challenging under such conditions. In the paper I would like to share the ideas and experience from re- designing the syllabus for this course of English for international trade law. I describe the process from the original syllabus to a new one in which the teaching situation and students’ needs are taken into account. The course in- tends to include both product and process oriented goals and helps to improve general professional needs. In order to cover the field specific vocabulary, language practice and soft skills development within the above mentioned limited time frame, the students need to work both before and after the classes. The course is going to be piloted this year and we expect further modifications after its evaluation. (shrink)

With increasing public demand for ethical accountability, business schools are experiencing difficulty incorporating relevant training into their programmes. Rakesh Khurana, professor of organizational behaviour at Harvard Business School, has provided an historical account explaining how business schools initially promoted and then abandoned a specific professional identity for their students, which would have included a set of ethical values. It is possible to begin to revive this initial project by incorporating certain philosophical approaches to teaching ethics. The philosophies of both Martin (...) Heidegger and John Dewey can be used to steer such professional training. In combination, Heidegger’s existential demand for responsibility and Dewey’s pragmatic concern for the social environment provide pedagogical techniques and guidelines for successful instruction. (shrink)

Internationally, over the last 20-30 years, changing the procedures and processes of assessment has come to be seen, by many educators as well as policy-makers, as a way to frame the curriculum and drive the reform of schooling. Such developments have often been manifested in large scale, high stakes testing programmes. At the same time educational arguments have been made about the need to provide students with good quality formative feedback, and informative reports about what they have achieved. The (...) chimera of a perfectly integrated and functioning curriculum and assessment system has been pursued, but such ambition far outstretches systemic capacity; it is neither feasible nor desirable. The national testing and examination system in England is an exemplar case. As national results have improved, much evidence suggests that, if anything, actual standards of achievement are falling, and grade inflation is undermining public confidence in the whole system. The paper will review these issues and tensions, and argue that a different model for developing curriculum and assessment is urgently needed. (shrink)

The International Panel on Social Progress is an independent association of top research scholars with the goal of assessing methods for improving the main institutions of modern societies. The IPSP has produced a report consisting of twenty-two chapters in three volumes that distills the research of these scholars and outlines what the best social science has to say about positive social change. Written in accessible language by scholars across the social sciences and humanities, these volumes assess the achievements of (...) world societies in past centuries, the current trends, the dangers that we are now facing, and the possible futures in the twenty-first century. It covers the main socio-economic, political, and cultural dimensions of social progress, global as well as regional issues, and the diversity of challenges and their interplay around the world. The authors offer a cautious optimistic conclusion: multiple ideas for social progress and better policies are already available and deserve to be tested and implemented. (shrink)

Student-generated video creation assessments are an innovative and emerging form of assessment in higher education. Academic staff may be understandably reluctant to transform assessment practices without robust evidence of the benefits and rationale for doing so and some guidance regarding how to do so successfully. A systematic approach to searching the literature was conducted to identify relevant resources, which generated key documents, authors and internet sources which were thematically analysed. This comprehensive critical synthesis of literature is presented (...) here under the headings of findings from literature, relevance of digital capabilities, understanding the influence of local context and resources, and pedagogical considerations. Student-generated video creation for assessment is shown to have several benefits, notably in supporting development of digital and communication skills relevant to today’s world and in enhancing learning. As an emerging innovation within assessment, intentionally planning and supporting a change management process with both students and staff is required. The importance of alignment to learning outcomes, context and resources, choice of video format to desired skills development, and to relevance beyond graduation is emphasised for video creation in assessment to be used successfully. Video creation for assessment is likely to grow in popularity and it is hoped the evidence of benefits, rationale and guidance as to how to do this effectively presented here will support this transformation. Further research to consider video creation for assessment with individuals rather than collaborative group assessments, and to establish academic rigour and equivalence would be beneficial. (shrink)

Few residency training programmes explicitly require substantive exposure to issues in medical ethics and fewer still have a formal curriculum in this area. Traditional undergraduate medical ethics courses teach preclinical students to identify ethical issues and analyse them at a theoretical level. Residency training, however, is the ideal time to establish the critical behavioural link which makes ethics truly useful in clinical medicine. The General Internal Medicine Residency Training Program at Rhode Island Hospital has developed an integrated, three-year curriculum with (...) the goals of helping residents to perceive ethical issues in clinical practice, to utilise basic philosophical principles in resolving ethical dilemmas and to communicate these issues clearly and sensitively to patients. The curriculum has been well received by residents and has had a hospital-wide impact. We believe that training residents in medical ethics and communication skills is an effective approach to developing physicians' humane qualities. (shrink)

This is the first of three volumes containing a report from the International Panel on Social Progress. The IPSP is an independent association of top research scholars with the goal of assessing methods for improving the main institutions of modern societies. Written in accessible language by scholars across the social sciences and humanities, these volumes assess the achievements of world societies in past centuries, the current trends, the dangers that we are now facing, and the possible futures in the (...) twenty-first century. It covers the main socio-economic, political, and cultural dimensions of social progress, global as well as regional issues, and the diversity of challenges and their interplay around the world. This particular volume covers topics such as economic inequality and growth, finance and corporations, labor, capitalism, and social justice. (shrink)

Postural instability marks a prevalent symptom of Parkinson’s disease. It often manifests in increased body sway, which is commonly assessed by tracking the Center of Pressure. Yet, in terms of postural control, the body’s Center of Mass, and not CoP is what is regulated in a gravitational field. The aim of this study was to explore the effect of early- to mid-stage PD on these measures of postural control in response to unpredictable visual perturbations. We investigated three cohorts: 18 patients (...) with early to mid-stage PD [Hoehn & Yahr stage ; 1.94 ± 0.70]; a group of 15 age-matched controls ; and a group of 12 young healthy adults. Participants stood on a force plate to track their CoP, while the movement of their entire body was recorded with a video-based motion tracking system to monitor their CoM. A moving room paradigm was applied through a head-mounted virtual reality headset. The stimulus consisted of a virtual tunnel that stretched in the anterior-posterior direction which either remained static or moved back and forth in an unpredictable fashion.We found differences in mean sway amplitude and mean velocities of CoP and CoM between the groups under both conditions, with higher MSA of CoP and CoM for PD and higher mean velocities of both variables for PD and ECT when compared with YCT. Visual perturbation increased mean CoP velocity in all groups but did not have effects on mean CoM velocity or MSA. While being significantly lower for the young adults, the net effect of visual perturbation on mean CoP velocity was similar between patients with PD and age-matched controls. There was no effect of the visual perturbation on mean CoM velocity for any of the groups.Our simultaneous assessment of CoP and CoM revealed that postural control is reflected differently in CoM and CoP. As the motion of CoM remained mostly unaffected, all groups successfully counteracted the perturbation and maintained their balance. Higher CoP velocity for PD and ECT revealed increased corrective motion needed to achieve this, which however was similar in both groups. Thus, our results suggest increased effort, expressed in CoP velocity, to be an effect of age rather than disease in earlier stages of PD. (shrink)

ObjectiveWe conducted the following cross-sectional study to comprehensively assess the anxiety among Chinese international students who studied online during the COVID-19 pandemic and its influencing factors.MethodsQuestionnaires were distributed through “Sojump,” and a total of 1,090 valid questionnaires were collected. The questionnaire was divided into two parts: general situation and anxiety assessment of students. The former used a self-made questionnaire, and the international general GAD-7 scale was used to measure anxiety. Chi-square test was used to analyze the differences (...) between groups, and logistic regression analysis was performed for the factors with differences.ResultsAnxiety was found in 707 of 1,090 international students. Chi-square test and multivariate Logistic regression analysis showed that the incidence of anxiety was higher in the group under 22 years of age than in the group over 22 years of age ; International students living in big cities had a higher incidence of anxiety than those living in rural areas ; international students who socialized 3 times or less monthly had a higher incidence of anxiety than those who socialized more than 3 times per month ; international students who expected purely online teaching had a higher incidence of anxiety than those who expected purely offline teaching or dual-track teaching ; international students with a subjective score of online learning experience of 6 or less had a higher incidence of anxiety than those with subjective scores of more than 6. However, gender, emotional status, BMI, major of study, vaccination status, and degree type had no significant difference in the incidence of anxiety among international students who studied online during the COVID-19 pandemic.ConclusionDuring COVID-19, international students who were younger, came from big cities, had low social frequency, expected purely online teaching, and had poor experience of online classes were risk factors for anxiety during online classes. (shrink)

This is the third of three volumes containing a report from the International Panel on Social Progress. The IPSP is an independent association of top research scholars with the goal of assessing methods for improving the main institutions of modern societies. Written in accessible language by scholars across the social sciences and humanities, these volumes assess the achievements of world societies in past centuries, the current trends, the dangers that we are now facing, and the possible futures in the (...) twenty-first century. It covers the main socio-economic, political, and cultural dimensions of social progress, global as well as regional issues, and the diversity of challenges and their interplay around the world. This particular volume covers topics such as world cultures and religions, families, global health, education, and the contributions of social sciences to institutional change. (shrink)

At a time when contract cheating advertisements are proliferating both online and offline, an analysis of their format, wording and approach furnishes critical information for educational providers about the attitudes of international students towards academic honesty. This analysis, in company with the available research literature, points to particular concerns regarding international students, especially those who are undertaking business-related degrees. There is much disquiet on the part of universities generally about the failure of such students to engage in the (...) academic discourse socialisation process and so distancing themselves from the academic community, as well as flaunting academic protocols which uphold the credibility of their university degrees. In light of the challenging nature of contract cheating detection, a comprehensive overview of pedagogical responses is discussed including anti-contract cheating software, the greater use of in-class assessments and a return to more personalised face-to-face classroom teaching. (shrink)

The number of International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme (IBDP) schools has increased rapidly in China in recent years. However, access to schools offering the IBDP remains restricted to a relatively elite minority of China’s population due to enrolment barriers for Chinese nationals and relatively high school fees. An implication is that students potentially remain in physical, cultural and socio-economic isolation from host communities. Within this context, this study explored how, and the extent to which, two core components of the (...) IBDP – namely, the Learner Profile and Creativity, Action, Service – help foster inter-cultural understanding between students and other communities within Chinese society. To this end, in mid 2013 interview data were gathered from IBDP teachers, IBDP administrators, and IBDP students from five elite IBDP schools in Beijing and Shanghai. Findings revealed a perception that the Learner Profile could provide a strong theoretical appreciation of the norms and values of other cultures, while Creativity, Action, Service could break down physical divides by offering students an opportunity to interact with people of different cultures and socio-economic groups. Nevertheless, interviewees also noted tensions with the implementation of these components in the context of results-oriented elite IBDP schools in China. (shrink)

Biobanks and biospecimen collections are becoming a primary means of delivering personalized diagnostics and tailoring individualized therapeutics. This shift towards precision medicine requires interactions among a variety of stakeholders, including the public, patients, healthcare providers, government, and donors. Very few studies have investigated the role of healthcare students in biobanking and biospecimen donations. The main aims of this study were to evaluate the knowledge of senior healthcare students about biobanks and to assess the students’ willingness to donate biospecimens and the (...) factors influencing their attitudes. A cross-sectional study was conducted among senior healthcare students at King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. The data were obtained using a self-administered questionnaire in English. In addition to the respondents’ biographical data section, the questionnaire assessed the respondents’ general knowledge about biobanking, the factors influencing their willingness to donate biospecimens to biobanks and their general attitudes towards biomedical research. A total of 597 senior healthcare students were included in the study. The general knowledge score was 3.2 out of 7. Only approximately 44% and 27% of students were aware of the terms “Human Genome Project” and “biobank,” respectively. The majority of the students were willing to donate biospecimens to biobanks. Multiple factors were significantly associated with their willingness to donate, including their perceived general health, past experience with both tissue testing and tissue donation, biobanking knowledge score and biomedical research attitude score. The main reasons for students’ willingness to donate were advancement of medical research and societal benefits, whereas misuse of biospecimens and confidentiality breaches were the main reasons for a reluctance to donate. Despite their strong willingness to donate biospecimens, students exhibited a notable lack of knowledge about biobanking and the HGP. To expedite the transition towards PM, it is highly recommended to enhance healthcare curricula by including more educational and awareness programmes to familiarize students with OMICs technologies in addition to the scope of research and clinical applications. (shrink)

Contemporary engineering education recognises the need for engineering ethics content in undergraduate programmes to extend beyond concepts that form the basis of professional codes to consider relationality and context of engineering practice. Yet there is debate on how this might be done, and we argue that the design and pedagogy for engineering ethics has to consider what and to whom ethics is taught in a particular context. Our interest is in the possibilities and challenges of pursuing the dual imperatives of (...) socialization and critique. Socialization involves creating opportunities for all, in a diverse cohort of students, to access and engage with the dominant professional engineering ethics knowledge, while critique involves engaging with a range of ways of knowing, valuing, being and using language as relevant in contemporary engineering practice. We identify conceptual tools from engineering ethics and ethical pedagogy in education scholarship for our context. We illustrate how we use these tools systematically to strengthen our reflective practice in a first-year university engineering ethics module to a deeper form of reflexivity. Specifically, we explore the ways in which we attend to the dual imperatives and also highlight opportunities that we miss. We identify as key opportunities design choices such as how we formulated questions and prompts, and how we attended to content, context and language in selecting classroom texts. Other key opportunities were pedagogical choices of when and how to use student contributions in discussion, and what was made explicit in the classroom and assessment. We share our plans to take our learnings forward in our practice and consider the generative possibilities of these learnings and the concepts in other contexts. (shrink)

This paper presents a cross-sectional study that demonstrates how King Abdulaziz University has responded to the lockdown imposed by the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of students and faculty towards assessment that had to take place online due to physical or social distancing rules and lockdowns. A descriptive mixed-method study was conducted with two different self-administered questionnaires that were developed for students and faculty, (...) respectively. A total of 547 responses were received from undergraduate students and 213 from faculty. The main finding suggests the need for a multilevel approach to the problems of cheating and plagiarism, including raising student awareness and ethics, training teachers to detect cheating methods, and institutions activating their code of practice and applying severe sanctions on those who engage in such practices. (shrink)

Holistic ethics education in the professions is never fully served by a reliance on regulatory compliance alone. Data obtained from penalties due to corporate non-compliance in specific professions rarely describe the underlying ethical failures that are the foundation for “rule-breaking” in the professions. However, “violations” data may serve as a springboard for an educational discussion and approach that helps professionals (and those studying to become professionals) to understand the basic moral reasoning that underlies the “good” that is served by adhering (...) to professional Codes of Conduct, Codes of Practice, Codes of Ethics, and the professional regulatory environment. We here use data obtained from the US FDA, US DOJ, and from Violations Tracker and compare these data with the IFPMA (International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Association) Ethos and guiding principles. These side-by-side linkages serve as a mechanism to help students assess which ethical principles are at the core of each such violation in the pharmaceutical industry. We further recommend that this approach be incorporated into ethics education, especially beginning at the undergraduate level, as prophylaxis to ethical lapses in later professional life. (shrink)

Singing is a way of musical expression interwoven into the human beings' very essence. Voice, as an intimate instrument invisible to the eye, demands as fuller use as possible, which includes muscular stamina and refined listening to sounds. In the educational system, singing is a part of a structured programme with the goal of developing singing abilities and musical culture of participants in the educational process in general. Feeling self-confident and having an image of oneself as a competent and (...) qualified expert in the singing area is of the utmost importance for quality work in the profession of preschool teachers or teachers. The goal of this study was to examine how students at the Teacher Education faculty perceive themselves and assess their singing abilities according to the singing elements we should nourish in working with children. The study aimed at examining how much the students enjoy singing activities, how they appraise their sense of self-confidence in singing, and to which extent the feeling of competence in singing is related with the time component of learning. It was investigated how teachers assess their satisfaction and self-confidence in singing, and whether the connection between these constructs and the type and year of study exists. The research involving 162 participants was conducted in the academic year 2021/2022. The results have shown that students of teacher education faculty are satisfied with their singing abilities and evaluate them well. On the other hand, they lack self-confidence and are not self-assured during singing activities. The results of the t-test showed a statistically significant difference in the assessment of satisfaction with singing abilities between students of early and preschool education and teacher education. The Kruskal-Wallis test determined the existence of statistically significant differences between students of higher years of study and those at lower year of studying according to their assessment of satisfaction with singing activities, wherein students at higher study years gave higher assessments. (shrink)

Law abidance is very important for effective leaders. Without law abidance, abuse of power and corruption would easily happen, which would eventually erode organizational health. To promote law abidance leadership in university students in Hong Kong, we developed a law abidance leadership program with 3 h of face-to-face lecture and 7 h of self-study of materials disturbed to students. To understand students’ perception of the 3-h lecture, we conducted a post-lecture evaluation study using a 26-item measure. Results showed that the (...) scale possessed good reliability and validity. Confirmatory factor analyses showed that the assessment tool has three internally consistent and factorial invariant dimensions: program attributes, appreciation of law abidance, and teacher attributes. Regarding students’ perception of the program, students were generally satisfied with the lecture attributes, including design, content, lecture atmosphere, teaching quality, and benefits to students. In particular, students agreed that the lecture helped them understand the importance and value of law abidance and national security; over 95% of the students indicated that they would try their best to serve as law-abiding citizens and socially responsible leaders. Multiple regression analyses showed that program attributes, appreciation of law abidance, and teacher attributes predicted overall satisfaction with the lecture. Qualitative comments of the student echoed the quantitative findings, with most of the comments being positive in nature. The present study replicated the findings reported previously. Local and international contextual factors relevant to the interpretations of the findings are highlighted. (shrink)

Medical ethics is a practical key element in the medical curriculum. Movies can be used as an effective and innovative way to involve students in discussions and reflections on ethical issues. This study aimed to evaluate the appropriateness of medical movies as a tool in medical ethics education. During the last teaching session of the medical ethics courses, the movie “Extreme Measures” was shown to the medical students. The present study is a descriptive-analytical study of 302 students’ manuscripts. The quantitative (...) content analysis of the students’ manuscripts was carried out using a checklist that contained 11 titles and 75 subtitles. Each student’s checklist was compared to the student’s final exam score. The most recognized issue was justice, and the least recognized one was confidentiality and privacy. Nonmaleficence, respecting autonomy and informed consent, honor and integrity, end of life, duty and responsibility, conflict of interest, beneficence, relationship with colleagues and altruism were located in-between. There was a relationship between students’ final exam scores and their manuscripts’ scores. According to our findings, relevant movies with standard categorization can be used as a useful method for medical ethics education and assessment. (shrink)

One of the main goals of assignments in the academic environment is to assess the students’ knowledge and mastery of a specific topic, and it is crucial to ensure that the work is original and has been solely made by the students to assess their competence acquisition. Therefore, Text-Matching Software Products are used by academic institutes to ensure academic integrity and address plagiarism. However, some students find ways to trick TMSPS. In this paper, files with the common tricks students do (...) to beat TMSPS have been created and investigates with nine academic level TMPS to evaluate their effectiveness against these tricks, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each TMSP, and providing instructors with some practical tips on checking plagiarism effectively and spotting any tricks to cheat without getting noticed. (shrink)

Student authentication and authorship checking systems are intended to help teachers address cheating and plagiarism. This study set out to investigate higher education teachers’ perceptions of the prevalence and types of cheating in their courses with a focus on the possible changes that might come about as a result of an increased use of e-assessment, ways of addressing cheating, and how the use of student authentication and authorship checking systems might impact on assessment practice. This study (...) was carried out within the context of the project TeSLA (an Adaptive Trust-based e-assessment System for Learning) which is developing a system intended for integration within an institution’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) offering a variety of instruments to assure student authentication and authorship checking. Data was collected at two universities that were trialling the TeSLA system, one in Turkey, where the main modes of teaching are face-to-face teaching and distance education, and one in Bulgaria, where the main modes of teaching are face-to-face teaching and blended learning. The study used questionnaires and interviews, building on existing TeSLA project evaluation activities and extending these to explore the specific areas we wished to examine in more depth.In three of the four contexts cheating was seen by teachers as a serious and growing problem, the exception was the distance education context where the teachers believed that the existing procedures were effective in controlling cheating. Most teachers in all four contexts expected cheating to become a greater problem with increased use of e-assessment. Student authentication was not seen as a major problem in any of the contexts, as this was felt to be well controlled through face-to-face proctored assessments, though the problem of assuring effective authentication was seen by many teachers as a barrier to increased use of e-assessment. Authorship checking was seen as a major issue in all contexts, as copying and pasting from the web, ghost writing and plagiarism were all reported as widely prevalent, and authorship checking was seen as becoming even more important with increased use of e-assessment. Teachers identified a third category of cheating behaviours, which was the accessing of information from other students, from written materials, and from the internet during assessments.Teachers identified a number of approaches to addressing the problem of cheating: education, technology, assessment design, sanctions, policy, and surveillance. Whilst technology was not seen as the most important approach to prevention, student authentication and authorship checking systems were seen as relevant in terms of reducing reliance on face-to-face proctored examinations, and in improving the quality of assessment through supporting the employment of a wider range of assessment methods. The development of authorship checking based on computational linguistic approaches was an area of particular interest. Student authentication and authorship checking systems were not seen as being able to address the third category of cheating behaviours that the study identified. (shrink)

This article describes the development and validation of a diagnostic test of German and its integration in a programme of formative assessment during a one-year initial teacher-training course. The test focuses on linguistic aspects that cause difficulty for trainee teachers of German as a foreign language and assesses implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge as well as students' confidence in this knowledge. Administration of the test to 57 German speakers in four groups (first-year undergraduates, fourth-year undergraduates, postgraduate trainees, and (...) native speakers) provided evidence of its reliability and validity. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show whether the two crucial dimensions used for assessing the quality of argumentation, argument-as-a-product (argument structure) and argument-as-a-process (relevance), are interrelated, and how they can be used to assess the effect of argumentative mode on students’ arguments. To this purpose, a twofold coding scheme will be developed, aimed at capturing: a) the argumentative function of evidence use and b) the dialogical relevance of evidence use. A study will be described in which students’ use (...) of evidence is elicited in two distinct argumentative modes (dialogical vs. non-dialogical). According to the results, in the dialogical mode students tended to use evidence in a more sophisticated way from both argument evaluation perspectives. (shrink)

Whereas the importance of authenticity in relation to educational contexts has been highlighted, educational authenticity has mainly referred to a real-life/world convergence or the notion of teacher authenticity, implying that authenticity can be taught and learnt. This view, however, has largely overlooked philosophical considerations so that the semantic and ontological vagueness surrounding authenticity has generated an uneven dialectic between the term’s potential significance and its actual relevance for the educational field. This article aims to move closer towards an understanding of (...) philosophically grounded EA as a normative ideal for education. It discusses three contemporary philosophical models of authenticity and how they relate to the multicultural dimension of the International Baccalaureate’s Primary Years Programme. I will argue that by extrapolating common features of these theories, EA bears significant potential for contemporary education as it combines the importance of civic engagement, preparation for political involvement, and co-construction of knowledge and offers a fresh rationale for student involvement in curriculum planning. (shrink)

At Universitat Politècnica de València, Meridies, an internship programme that places engineering students in countries of Latin America, is one of the few opportunities the students have to explore the implications of being a professional in society in a different cultural and social context. This programme was analyzed using the capabilities approach as a frame of reference for examining the effects of the programme on eight student participants. The eight pro-public-good capabilities proposed by Melanie Walker were (...) investigated through semi-structured interviews. The internship is an environment in which students can put into practice the knowledge they have acquired in undergraduate studies and to find practical relevance in what they studied. Occasionally, this also entails a critical questioning of what they have learned, a greater awareness of the limits of the contents of their studies and of the way things were taught, and interest in less explored issues that are closely linked to social justice. However, tensions can arise between the pro-public-good oriented perspectives of this programme, and a more instrumental vision. One way to overcome these tensions is to foster consideration of reflexivity, that is, the dynamic relationship between technology and society. To do so, the programme must create space before and during the internship, and upon the return of the students, to discuss and collectively reflect upon their lived experience. Additionally, it ought to engage supervisors in this educational journey, both at the university and in the host institutions, and also involve socially committed organisations in this task. (shrink)