bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Study of Discontinuing Students at Macquarie University
Authors: Baumgart Neil 
Published: March 2013

In a study of discontinuing students at Macquarie University major analyses were based on a sample of 444 students divided into four categories: students still persisting in Term 3 of second year, students who discontinued during first year, students who voluntarily discontinued after first year, and students excluded because of failure at the end of first year. Multiple discriminant analyses were used to relate potential predictors to category membership. Predictors included both entry and process variables. Results are reported separately for full-time and part-time students, and for males and females within these categories. The major findings carry implications for those who need to make management decisions in relation to higher education. Additionally, the paper attempts to highlight some of the design problems inherent in correlational studies and to present selected methodological strategies used in this study to minimize the effects of these problems.
How Do You Prefer Your Item Analyses: Traditional or Rasch?
Authors: Thomson J. D. , Parkin B. 
Published: March 2013

Item analyses of a 22-item attitude questionnaire were undertaken using both a traditional approach and the Rasch technique. These analyses, obtained from the responses of a sample of 158 Year 5 children indicated, at first glance, discrepant results. Initial inspection of the traditional item analysis suggested that, due to extremely low discrimination indices, all of the items were unsatisfactory. For the Rasch model, however, all items appeared to refer to a unidimensional trait and formed a very comformable set. Our reconciliation of these seemingly disparate results is based upon three considerations: first, whether the items do or do not measure a single trait; second, whether the interaction of the subjects with the items has resulted in a set of random responses, and third, whether there is an adequate dispersion of subjects along the scale continuum.
MACOS in Queensland: The Politics of Educational Knowledge
Authors: Smith R. A. , Knight J. 
Published: March 2013

The paper is concerned with the controversy about a primary school level social studies course, MACOS, which occurred in Queensland in 1977. The course was attacked by religious fundamentalists over a period of four months and consequently was banned from Queensland State schools by Cabinet in January 1978. The paper provides background to the debate in order to show that the Queensland campaign against MACOS was similar to those which occurred in the U.S.A. in recent years. A content analysis of fundamentalist writings and MACOS materials is described. The results show that fundamentalist writings and MACOS materials are diametrically opposed at the level of cultural presuppositions. In addition, an attempt is made to demonstrate a connection between knowledge and the use of power by the political elite. We argue that the fundamentalist paradigm for society is favoured by the Queensland Cabinet over competing versions of social reality. The decision to ban MACOS (and SEMP later) can be understood then as a political move to ensure that the schools reinforce the views of the political elite.
Sex Stereotypes: Some Evidence from Australian Schools
Authors: Sampson S. 
Published: March 2013

Sex stereotypes help to support a view of the male sex as naturally possessing qualities relevant to leadership which are believed to be lacking in the female. These assumptions are apparent in accounts of male and female family and economic roles and are reflected in attitudes to sex roles in many situations. Although objective reality may be similar for both, boys are more likely to believe in the deficient female stereotype than girls. Comparisons of the attitudes and sex stereotypes of girls and boys in high schools with a female principal and high schools with a male principal were investigated to ascertain whether having experience of women in leadership roles was related to greater acceptance of women's capabilities. Findings of this research indicate that boys significantly more often than girls believed that women generally did not possess the characteristics necessary for leadership, regardless of the sex of the principal. Male attitudes to female capacities may partially account for women's lack of career advancement.
Dreams and Realities about Values and Core Curriculum in Secondary Schools
Authors: Toomey Ron 
Published: March 2013

Core curriculum is a design concept planned around common, agreed values or universally desired outcomes and common learning experiences. Recently, there has been considerable interest, both in Australia and in other places such as U.K., U.S.A., and Canada, in the possibility of identifying a content and structure for a core curriculum. This paper argues that the beginnings of a core curriculum (and not one tied to traditional subjects) already exist in Australia. Furthermore, it proposes that the major obstacle in moving schools towards a core curriculum lies not in identifying appropriate content and structure but rather in providing school level support for program design and effective installation.
Measuring Organizational Climate in Secondary Schools
Authors: Deer Christine E. 
Published: March 2013

Organizational climate refers to the notion of perceived environmental quality. This paper reports research conducted in ten New South Wales State secondary schools measuring organizational climate by taking account of pupil and teacher perceptions. It builds on the earlier work of Finlayson, Banks and Loughran in the United Kingdom and serves as a means of validating their dimensions of organizational climate. A technique for clustering schools according to organizational climate and for identifying the separation of the clusters is reported enabling a comparison across schools to be made. The measures reported have potential for schools wishing to review their current state of organizational health as a means of improving the quality of life for all concerned.
The Tangle of Student Allowances
Authors: Thomson Norman J. 
Published: March 2013

All of the grants and allowances paid to students by the government (State or Commonwealth) can be classified under one of two categories: expense allowances or living allowances. The article begins by stating the case or need for such direct payments to students. It soon becomes clear that both categories of allowances are provided to equalise opportunity. In the case of expense allowances, the need varies from State to State depending upon the particular State's policies in making free schooling accessible to all students. Living allowances, provided to meet the needs of the socially and economically disadvantaged, constitute part of a government's package of measures designed to reduce the inequalities of private welfare that exist in our society. The article then focuses briefly on the apparent inequality in living allowance support given to high school students relative to tertiary students. Given the increasing concern for the rate at which students from a disadvantaged home environment drop out of senior schooling, the comparison appears particularly incongruous. In conclusion, the article argues for the identification of expense allowances with State governments and living allowances with the Commonwealth. This would link the expense outlays of students directly with the States whose particular policy of indirect educational expenditure caused the private expenses incurred. The Commonwealth, on the other hand, would be able to co-ordinate national objectives of welfare redistribution through the living allowance support of students.
Cultural Pluralism and Educational Policy: In Search of Stable Multiculturalism
Authors: Smolicz J.J. 
Published: March 2013

The significance and meaning of cultural pluralism, or of multiculturalism as it is more commonly referred to in Australia, continue to excite much debate, as well as conceptual confusion. In this paper three possible types of multiculturalism in ethnically plural societies are analysed, namely those of ‘transitional‘, ‘residual’, and ‘stable’ or enduring multiculturalism. The latter orientation is carefully distinguished from separatism, while the transitional and residual types of multiculturalism are related to assimilationist solutions to pluralism. Throughout the paper the emphasis is placed on the paramount significance of culture in social life and on the need to distinguish between viable cultures that can be transmitted and modified by future generations, and cultures that have been reduced to residues through the loss of their core values. Such a concept of ethnic cultures, each with its distinct core, is discussed within the framework of values that are supra-ethnic, or shared by all sections of Australian society. From this vantage, the role of the school appears to be that of cultivating such shared values, and of transmitting the cores of all groups, within a social matrix that is dynamic and capable of change. This type of viable and developing pluralism is only possible if it is related to the personal cultural worlds of all Australians, since plurality remains a sterile notion unless it is seen to permeate the lives of individuals from all groups in society. The focus of the paper is on Australia, but examples from other ethnically plural societies are introduced, in order to highlight those developments that bear upon the Australian scene, and to explicate certain conceptual distinctions that are best understood in an international context.
The Identity Crisis in Secondary Education
Authors: Crittenden Brian 
Published: March 2013

Schooling for perhaps two-thirds of adolescents is at best inefficient; it is commonly simply destructive and brutalizing for everyone involved. It is a gigantic absurdity. (Frank Musgrove) Normal adolescents can find themselves and grow further only by coping with jobs, sex, and chances of the real world—it is useless to feed them curricular imitations. (Paul Goodman) Schools are the graveyards of desire. (Slogan on the wall of a Melbourne school)
Creation-Science, Evolution-Science, and Education: Anything Goes?
Authors: Knight John 
Published: March 2013

This paper attempts a sympathetic but critical understanding of creation-science and its attack on ‘normal science’ and the school curriculum. The claims of creationism to scientific status are examined from an unproblematic perspective on science and from that of several major contemporary theories of science. Questions of rights in a democracy are also considered. An understanding of the force of the creationist attack on science and the curriculum is sought through an examination of the social sources of fundamentalism. Creation-science is seen as an attempt to restore the unity of science and belief in a society where instrumental and normative knowledge have fractured and social cohesion and community are weakened. Three cheers to the fundamentalists in California who succeeded in having a dogmatic formulation of the theory of evolution removed from the textbooks and an account of Genesis included (but I know that they would become as chauvinistic and totalitarian as scientists are today when given the chance to run society all by themselves. Ideologies are marvellous when used in the company of other ideologies. They become boring and doctrinaire as soon as their merits lead to the removal of their opponents.)—(Feyerabend, 1981, p. 163)
Differential Prediction of First Year University Performance for Students from Different Social Backgrounds
Authors: West Leo H. T. 
Published: March 2013

In all States in Australia, the Higher School Certificate (HSC) or its equivalent is used to select students for entry to higher education, and it is generally considered to be the best predictor of first year performance. However, Dunn (1982) demonstrated, at the University of Melbourne, that HSC was a biased selector with respect to type of school attended. The present study tested that hypothesis at Monash University. In addition, an examination of selector bias was undertaken for other social background variables: father's occupational status as a surrogate of socio-economic status, and student's country of birth as a surrogate of ethnicity. It is shown that HSC is a consistently biased selector with respect to type of school attended but not with respect to father's occupational status or student's country of birth. Students from government schools perform as well in first year as those from independent schools who have an HSC score of the order of 10–25 marks higher (or about one quarter to one half of the standard deviation in HSC score).
Coeducation and Sex Roles
Authors: Harris Mary B. 
Published: March 2013

In order to test conflicting hypotheses about the effects of coeducational versus single-sex schooling, 538 first-term Australian university students who had attended single sex or coeducational high schools were compared on a number of variables relating to sex roles. Those from the two types of schools did not differ significantly on the Australian Sex Roles Inventory or on a measure of nontraditional attitudes towards sex roles, although males and females differed in predictable ways. Most subjects, particularly those from coeducational schools, felt that coeducational schools are preferable and lead to a more natural attitude towards the opposite sex. Subjects from coeducational rather than single-sex schools said that they had more opposite-sex friends in high school and were more likely to feel that their school helped rather than hindered their everyday relations with the opposite sex and their chances for a happy marriage. However subjects did not feel that boys and girls learn or behave better in coeducational schools, and there were no differences in the percentages of subjects from the two types of schools who reported having had sexual intercourse or been in love while in high school. The single-sex schools attended tended to differ from the coeducational ones in being smaller, more urban, and more likely to be selective, which made comparisons difficult to interpret. Nevertheless it seems reasonable to conclude that coeducational schooling, at least for this selective sample, may have some advantages in fostering interactions with the opposite sex.
What Do Developments in the Labour Market Imply for Postcompulsory Education in Australia?
Authors: Sweet Richard 
Published: March 2013

Growth in full-time educational participation since 1975 has been effective in reducing measured levels of youth unemployment. Had full-time participation not grown since 1975, it is estimated that an additional 86 400 15 to 19-year-olds would have been seeking full-time work in August 1985 and the unemployment rate for the age group would have been 31.5% rather than 20.3%. Future increases in school retention rates such as those envisaged by the Quality of Education Review Committee will have implications for levels of demand for the labour of youth as well as for the supply of youth labour. Reductions in unemployment among 18 to 19-year-olds as the result of educational initiatives will require full-time tertiary places to grow significantly. Whether growing full-time participation is of itself sufficient to improve the way in which postcompulsory education supplies productive skills to the economy is open to question. Comparisons between Australia and other OECD countries suggest that issues of vocational preparation, and not levels of senior secondary participation or higher education output, should be seen as central within Australian debate on education's link to the economy. On a number of educational expenditure, participation and output measures, Australia is at least on a par with the OECD average. However the proportion of young Australians in programs of vocational preparation is less than half the OECD average, and is the second lowest of 20 OECD countries for which data are available. Recent Australian reports on postcompulsory education generally reject a role for schools in vocational preparation. This is probably sensible in view of the way in which the traditions and values of Australian schools limit their capacity to provide access to vocational programs. However, it begs the question of why other advanced industrial economies take a contrary view, and prevents attention being paid to questions of how the postcompulsory system as a whole can increase young people's access to recognised programs of vocational preparation. Rather than a quest for a common curriculum in the postcompulsory years, effort to create common credentials that can link schools and technical and further education (TAFE) is urged.
Contractual or Responsive Accountability? Neo-Centrilist ‘Self-Management’ or Systemic Subsidiarity? Tasmanian Parents' and other Stakeholders' Policy Preferences
Authors: Macpherson R.J.S. 
Published: March 2013

WHEN state governments decentralised many administrative responsibilities to schools in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was assumed that they would develop better capacities to manage, develop and govern themselves. In general, such decentralisation attempted to replace bureaucracies with corporate management, focus school evaluation onto the auditing of performance indicators, cut ex-school support structures in favour of locally contracted expertise, and displace hierarchy with collegial networks. The principle of public accountability in public education was redefined as a local obligation to be discharged through managerial, market and political mechanisms. The research reported here shows that Tasmanian parents actually prefer a far more educative and communitarian approach to accountability, and that this view is broadly shared with other key stakeholders: teachers, principals and state government officials. The empirical findings reported contradict orthodox structures, practices and theory and have substantial implications for policy making.
Dual-Coded Advisory Turn Indicators for GPS Navigational Guidance of Surface Vehicles
Authors: Rizzardo Caitlan A. , Colle Herbert A. 
Published: March 2013

Objective: The aim of the study was to compare the decision times for left–right decisions for a dual-coded advisory turn indicator and a typical spatial-only turn indicator in a GPS navigational map display. Background: Track-up maps are useful for turn decision making but do not facilitate configural knowledge acquisition of an area. North-up maps present a stable orientation for this type of learning, but typical implementations of north-up map displays lead to misaligned and confusing turn information. We compared a typical spatial-only indicator with a dual-coded spatial-plus-verbal indicator, systematically manipulating vehicle heading and measuring reaction time. The new display, the Dual-Coded Advisory Turn Indicator for Maps (DATIM), was based on an assumption of the advantages of concurrent verbal and spatial processing of advisory turn indicators in map displays. Method: The experimental design was a 2 × 2 × 24 mixed design with indicator type as a between-subjects factor and turn direction (left, right) and 24 heading angles (15° intervals) as repeated-measures factors. Participants made turn decisions while viewing static displays of intersections at variably rotated headings. Results: Reaction time for the DATIM display was consistently faster than the typical spatial-only indicator at all heading angles but especially at heading angles beyond ±45° (520-ms difference at 180°). Conclusion: The DATIM display produced faster turn decisions at all heading angles. Application: DATIM displays could allow north-up maps to be used for turn-by-turn decision making in GPS navigational systems. Drivers could have the advantages of both the stable orientation to facilitate planning and the easy turn-by-turn guidance. Limitations are discussed.
The Impact of Eye Movements and Cognitive Workload on Lateral Position Variability in Driving
Authors: Cooper Joel M. , Medeiros-Ward Nathan , Strayer David L. 
Published: March 2013

Objective: The objective of this work was to understand the relationship between eye movements and cognitive workload in maintaining lane position while driving. Background: Recent findings in driving research have found that, paradoxically, increases in cognitive workload decrease lateral position variability. If people drive where they look and drivers look more centrally with increased cognitive workload, then one could explain the decreases in lateral position variability as a result of changes in lateral eye movements. In contrast, it is also possible that cognitive workload brings about these patterns regardless of changes in eye movements. Method: We conducted three experiments involving a fixed-base driving simulator to independently manipulate eye movements and cognitive workload. Results: Results indicated that eye movements played a modest role in lateral position variability, whereas cognitive workload played a much more substantial role. Conclusions: Increases in cognitive workload decrease lane position variability independently from eye movements. These findings are discussed in terms of hierarchical control theory. Applications: These findings could potentially be used to identify periods of high cognitive workload during driving.
Unexpected Hematologic Effects of Biotherapeutics in Nonclinical Species and in Humans
Authors: Everds Nancy E. , Tarrant Jacqueline M. 
Published: March 2013

Biotherapeutics are expanding the arsenal of therapeutics available for treating and preventing disease. Although initially thought to have limited side effects due to the specificity of their binding, these drugs have now been shown to have potential for adverse drug reactions including effects on peripheral blood cell counts or function. Hematotoxicity caused by a biotherapeutic can be directly related to the activity of the biotherapeutic or can be indirect and due to autoimmunity, biological cascades, antidrug antibodies, or other immune system responses. Biotherapeutics can cause hematotoxicity primarily as a result of cellular activation, cytotoxicity, drug-dependent and independent immune responses, and sequelae from initiating cytokine and complement cascades. The underlying pathogenesis of biotherapeutic-induced hematotoxicity often is poorly understood. Nonclinical studies have generally predicted clinical hematotoxicity for recombinant cytokines and growth factors. However, most hematologic liabilities of biotherapeutics are not based on drug class but are species specific, immune-mediated, and of low incidence. Despite the potential for unexpected hematologic toxicity, the risk–benefit profile of most biotherapeutics is favorable; hematologic effects are readily monitorable and managed by dose modification, drug withdrawal, and/or therapeutic intervention. This article reviews examples of biotherapeutics that have unexpected hematotoxicity in nonclinical or clinical studies.