Negation, conjunction, and disjunction are major building blocks in the formation of concepts. This article presents a new model-based theory of these Boolean components. It predicts that individuals simplify the models of instances of concepts. Evidence corroborates the theory and challenges alternative accounts, such as those based on minimal…

The notion of forgetting implies that important information once learned and accessible can no longer be retrieved and remembered. Although college students do not need to recall everything, they frequently have some trouble remembering what they need to know when taking quizzes and examinations (exams), and when giving oral presentations. This…

This paper adds to the considerable literature on low completion rates for apprenticeships and traineeships by looking at whether the reasons given for not completing vary by how far the individual is into their contract of training. The approach the authors take is to calculate the probability of apprentices and trainees giving a particular…

The ability to effectively navigate organizational politics to achieve one's goals has long been recognized as necessary for individuals to experience success within their organizations. Many studies have linked the effective use of political behaviors to increased individual performance. As such, many scholars within HRD and other disciplines…

Focusing on expanding technical capabilities and new collaborative possibilities, we address 4 challenges for scientists who collect and use video records to conduct research in and on complex learning environments: (a) Selection: How can researchers be systematic in deciding which elements of a complex environment or extensive video corpus to…

Over the last two decades institutions of higher education have been subject to new modes of regulatory governance. This essay applies a "regulatory lens" to higher education governance with a view to understanding the sometimes contradictory relationship between the globalisation and regionalisation of higher education and the…

This exploratory study examines how society is adapting to an invasion of personal technology. Specifically, the paper reports a pretest study about incivility and the use of personal technology. Findings from this study are useful in providing initial views on demographic differences concerning perceptions about incivility and rudeness in the…

In 1994 Orlikowski and Gash articulated Technological Frames of Reference as a systematic theoretical lens to examine technological developments in organisations. A decade later, in 2004, Davidson and Pai expressed concern that while the lens was widely cited in academic discourse, the incidence and adoption of the model as an analytical framework…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a holistic understanding of quality in higher education which reveals the current debates about accreditation or quality process standards as insufficient, and to propose an enhanced model for quality culture in educational organisations. Design/methodology/approach: The conceptual framework is…

Explaining how the cognitive system can create new structures has been a major challenge for cognitive science. Self-organization from the theory of nonlinear dynamics offers an account of this remarkable phenomenon. Two studies provide an initial test of the hypothesis that the emergence of new cognitive structure follows the same universal…

Serious games have a great potential for training and educating people in novel and engaging ways. However, little empirical research has been done on the effectiveness of serious games, and although early findings do point to a moderately positive direction, even less is known about why some games succeed in effectively educating while others do…

Purpose: While the natural expectation is that students seek greater depth of learning as they develop intellectually during their studies, some research calls this into question and even suggests that student learning can become shallower from year to year. The present study aims to investigate the relative depth of students' learning at…

Background: Youth participation (or lack thereof) has been a subject of continued concern over the past 20 years. This decline has prompted huge interest in understanding how young people practice citizenship and in identifying measures that can help increase participation and interest. Purpose: The aim of this article is to examine how young…

This article criticises the role the mass media has played in constructing an idea of the Other, that is, people outside the national mainstream or other nationalities. It explains how the media promote or hinder a positive outlook on cultural diversity. Based on a review of the scholarly debate on media representations of Others, it identifies…

The consideration of threshold concepts is offered in the context of biological education as a theoretical framework that may have utility in the teaching and learning of biology at all levels. Threshold concepts may provide a mechanism to explain the observed punctuated nature of conceptual change. This perspective raises the profile of periods…