This article concentrates on the policy reforms of schools in England, Germany, France and Italy, from 1988 to 2009, with a focus on the introduction of market accountability. Pressing demands for organisational change in schools, shaped by the objectives of "efficiency" and competition, which were introduced in England in the 1980s,…

Radical curriculum policy transformations are emerging as a key strategy of universities across different countries as they move to strengthen their competitive position in a global knowledge era. This paper puts forward a "global case study" research agenda in the under-researched area of university curriculum policy. The particular…

This paper presents an educational game in mathematics based on an apprenticeship model using a teachable agent, as well as an evaluative study of how the game affects (1) conceptual understanding and (2) attitudes towards mathematics. In addition, we discuss how collaborative and competitive affordances of the game may affect understanding and…

Athletes' perceptions of coaches' communicative acts of interaction in two key interpersonal situations were examined, and their impact on the athletes: (a) when athletes lose competitions; and, (b) when athletes make mistakes in training. Athletes (N = 324, M age = 20.11) completed an open-ended survey. Data were deductively and inductively…

Globalisation has brought increasing diversity in student populations and therefore the potential for different sorts of knowledges to enter the academy. At the same time there is heightened surveillance brought about in response to the pressures of global competition, including increasing standardisation, marketisation and performativity…

Despite decreasing homophobia, openly gay male athletes are still rare in organized, competitive teamsports. In this action research, we explore two aspects of homosexuality and sport: (1) the effect of a gay male soccer player coming out to his teammates; and (2) the effect of having an openly gay researcher in the field. This is, therefore, the…

Classic approaches to word learning emphasize referential ambiguity: In naming situations, a novel word could refer to many possible objects, properties, actions, and so forth. To solve this, researchers have posited constraints, and inference strategies, but assume that determining the referent of a novel word is isomorphic to learning. We…

Objectives: Authors assessed the impact of a public-speaking competition on the level of interest in psychiatry of Ghanaian medical students. Method: An inter-medical school public-speaking competition was organized to promote psychiatry as a fulfilling career option for Ghanaian medical students. Feedback questionnaires were completed by the…

This article provides a theoretical framework through which to reimagine and revitalize contemporary music education practices, using the large ensemble paradigm called "band" as the primary unit of analysis. Literature suggests that band places too much emphasis on teacher control and external measures of validation. Critics propose replacing…

Murayama and Elliot (2012) made a significant contribution to the literature on competition by presenting the results of 2 meta-analyses and 3 primary studies on the relation between competition and performance. Murayama and Elliot established that in general, there is no relationship between competition and performance. They then made the case…

The focus of this article is on the organization of children's sport in Norway. More specifically, the paper sets out to examine (i) the changing pattern of relationships, and in particular the changing balance of conflict and cooperation, between the several organizations with responsibility for children's sport, and (ii) how sport for children…

Our objective was to determine whether the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup in 1998 had a short-term impact on the number of suicides in France. Exhaustive individual daily data on suicides from 1979 to 2006 were obtained from the French epidemiological center on the medical causes of death (CepiDC-INSERM;…

Educational systems worldwide face a number of fundamental challenges relative to the preparedness of graduates for employability and success in the 21st century. Colleges and universities are now increasingly called upon to equip their graduates with a new set of skills and dispositions that are markedly different from those that have…

The International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics, an annual astronomy and astrophysics competition for high school students, is described. Examples of problems and solutions from the competition are also given. (Contains 3 figures.)

Backward blocking (BB) and interference between cues (IbC) are cue competition effects produced by very similar manipulations. In a standard BB design, both effects might occur simultaneously, which implies a potential problem for studying BB. In the present study with humans, the magnitude of both effects was compared using a non-causal scenario…