Integrating Analysis and Communication Skills into the Decision Science Curriculum*

The teaching of decision sciences presupposes that careful attention is directed toward improving students' critical thinking and analytical skills. This paper presents an approach to teaching quantitative methods classes that focuses on developing student skills in the areas of analytical and critical thinking through written and oral communication. The approach requires very little additional instructor preparation time and does not require the instructor to make major changes in either the content or organization of the course. While the instructor's investment is minimal, the benefits to the students appear to be substantial.     

面向未来的埃及教育改革

埃及实行免费教育体制,长期和持续的国家投入保证了教育在大众中间的普及,使埃及教育长期在阿拉伯国家和非洲地区处于领先地位。但随着全球化的日益深入以及埃及国内经济形势的变化,单纯依靠政府投入越来越不能满足人民群众对高质量教育服务的需求。埃及教育主管部门根据形势发展的迫切要求,一方面大力推进教育体制改革,力行非中央化的政策,在教育投入和管理上,加大社会力量参与的力度,加强了教育基础设施建设,提高了教师待遇;另一方面用先进的信息技术手段改造传统教育模式,并在教学过程中引入问责制度,保证教育质量不断提高,使其更好地服务于社会经济的发展。     

The socioeconomic consequences of dropping out of high school: Evidence from an analysis of siblings

There is widespread belief that dropping out of high school leads to economic hardship. This belief rests on tenuous evidence. High school dropouts likely face an increased risk of economic hardship because of differences beyond a high school diploma. In particular, dropouts are more likely to come from disadvantaged backgrounds and thus face an elevated risk of economic hardship. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 Cohort, I estimate the consequences of dropping out by comparing dropouts to their siblings who completed high school. I also present OLS regression estimates using the same data. OLS regression estimates are consistently higher than sibling fixed effects estimates with the largest discrepancy occurring between estimates of the effect of dropping out on income-to-poverty ratio. However, the sibling fixed effect estimates reveal that dropping out has an effect on economic hardship net of unobserved background characteristics that are shared by siblings. I conclude with a discussion of how recent policy shifts affect the economic standing of low-ability students and suggest avenues for future research.     

INSTRUCTING OPERATIONS DESIGN: AN EXPERIENTIAL APPROACH

Teaching an operations design course has major pedagogical challenges. (1) The design topics—output, process, facility, and work design—are necessarily taught sequentially, yet the decisions are integrative. (2) Instruction must be generic to service or product producers. (3) Discussing output design is difficult since students typically have had no exposure to the “product language” of engineering graphics. (4) No text is available which examines in sufficient depth all the operations design decisions. (5) Cases necessarily depict historical situations—process technologies and economic data—while operations managers must plan future directions for their productive systems. (6) While the commercial world contains fresh information and data, students are inexperienced in obtaining knowledge from the real world. (7) While the course presents an operations management perspective, students must recognize the information, data, and cooperation necessary from the other functional areas to successfully complete the operations design. To help overcome these seven pedagogical challenges, the students in the undergraduate and graduate operation design courses complete a comprehensive feasibility study for a new product or service and the entire productive system.     

Poverty and educational achievement in the US: A less-biased estimate using PISA 2012 data

In the current paper, we employ the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data to calculate a less-biased estimate of poverty on US achievement. The PISA was specifically chosen as it is an assessment removed from a specific curriculum and instead focuses on concepts that students should know in order to participate in a global economy. Using a propensity score matching approach, our findings suggest that US students in poverty have notable educational attainment deficiencies compared to a matched group of students who are not in poverty. In other words, when we select two students who have a great deal in common but for the fact that one comes from a poverty background, the student in poverty is expected to perform nearly 28 points, or about a quarter of a standard deviation lower, on the PISA assessment. In real terms, this puts math achievement for children not in poverty on-par with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average, while children in poverty are well below the OECD average.     

Conquering with capital: social,cultural, and economic capital’s role in combating socioeconomic disadvantage and contributing to educational attainment

While socioeconomic barriers to learning have been well-documented by education, sociology, and social policy scholars, further research is needed to understand how students with low-socioeconomic status excel in high-performing schools. The collection and analysis of 20 in-depth interviews with female college students from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds provide rich insights into the stark differences between the educational practices of low and high-SES students. Building on Bourdieu’s conceptualization of how habitus and capital influence practices in the field of education exposes unique, strategic practices that low-SES students use to attain educational success within a system of reproduction and power. While entering a high-performing school is often perceived as a definitive step for accessing high-quality educational resources, my findings illustrate how it is actually an important intermediary step within a more complex process. Increasing educational opportunity and attainment for low-SES students requires improving their access to social, cultural, and economic capital through knowledgeable mentors who contribute to a habitus and portfolio of capital which enable practices to successfully navigate and challenge the educational system.     

Reconsidering “community liberated”: How class and the national context shape personal support networks

The “community liberated” thesis has been influential in describing contemporary social support systems. Specifically, “community liberated” argues that people do not seek support in their immediate neighborhood but rather entertain a network of far-flung ties to support-providing alters. This paper uses personal network data from six countries – Australia, Germany, the US, Austria, Hungary and Italy – to evaluate this argument and shows that the degree of liberation of one's community is strongly linked to one's socioeconomic status – specifically, one's education level. Additionally, we describe strong country-level heterogeneity in the spatial dynamics of personal support networks and find national contexts to be moderating the effect of education on community liberation, especially in Italy and Hungary, thus suggesting network geographic dispersion to be linked to national economic structures and labor markets. The paper thus elucidates the effect of two different, yet related social contexts on personal networks: the class context and the national context.     

Rethinking the Individualized Education Plan process: voices from the other side of the table

Parent involvement in the process of creating an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) is authorized under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a federal law in the United States that ensures children with disabilities have the opportunity to receive a free appropriate public education alongside their peers without disabilities in the least restrictive environment. Yet much research has shown that parents often feel like outsiders during the process. To understand parent perspectives about how educators might help make the IEP process more collaborative and inclusive, this study collected qualitative data from 35 parents of students with disabilities who have worked to develop an IEP with a school team. Our findings provide insight into parent experiences and evidence that parents have many suggestions for how educators can improve the IEP process. In our discussion section, we provide educators with strategies to address parent suggestions.     

How can context and discourse affect teachers’ and mental health professionals’ interactions with adults with mental illness?

Patients with severe mental illness may have needs different from those of patients with more limited illnesses and might benefit from other types of intervention than traditional treatment. We interviewed health care professionals from two open, short-term psychiatric wards and teachers from two schools for adults with psychiatric diagnoses. The focus was to explore how differences in contextual factors such as time, tasks, and organizational demands might affect the actions and attitudes of health care professionals and teachers, as well as the potential consequences for patients and students. Data were collected through qualitative interviews. Participants included 14 health care professionals and 14 teachers. The informants worked with patients and students with similar diagnoses and illness durations. All interviews were conducted during the informants’ work time. Findings and interpretations showed that both teachers and health care professionals were engaged in their work and in the wellbeing of students and patients. However, they described marked differences in practice, including the amount of time spent with students/patients, the organization of their work, main tasks, amount of control over their tasks, and social structure. These differences seemed to affect relationships with students/patients, attitudes toward students/patients, norms and values, and opportunities for patient empowerment. Our findings suggest that while existing psychiatric health care might be appropriate for limited short-term problems such as single-episode depression, a model with a supportive environment, based on stable relations and possibility for learning, may improve personal development and mental health for persons with severe mental illness and disturbances in self-experience.     

Virtual Worlds and Social Work Education

ABSTRACT

The introduction of computerised virtual worlds in the early twenty-first century was considered to be an innovation that would be widely used in higher education. There are a number of examples of virtual worlds used for higher education in medicine, nursing, and allied health, including examples in social work. The aim of this article is to explore the potential value of virtual-world technology to enhance the student learning experience for social work education in interpersonal communication skills in a virtual health centre. Findings of a study of Australian undergraduate social work students who engaged in a role play in a virtual health centre for skill development in interpersonal communication are presented. The study findings highlight issues for social work educators to consider when deciding whether or not to use virtual-world technology in social work education, and when designing further research on similar innovations.