Does higher education expansion promote educational homogamy? Evidence from married couples of the post-80s generation in Shanghai,China

The expansion of higher education witnessed in many societies influences the pattern of educational assortative mating. Structural transition theory predicts growing educational homogamy due to increasing preference for highly-educated partners who become more widely available. In contrast, social closure theory suggests depressed educational homogamy because the inflation of the education elite circle fosters the openness of marriage market, reducing the preference for a highly-educated mate and increasing the penetrability across social-status boundaries. Capitalizing the survey data that are representative of the post-80s one-child generation collected in Shanghai, China, we test the hypotheses derived from the two theories. Empirical results suggest that, with increasing availability of highly educated individuals, the extent of educational homogamy by birth cohort reveals a U-shaped pattern. This U-shaped pattern demonstrates increasing levels of educational homogamy and lends support to structural transition theory.     

Denying systemic inequality in segregated Chilean schools: race-neutral discourses among administrative and teaching staff

This article addresses the educational context in which ethnically segregated high poverty schools operate in Chile, and the ways that inequalities within these establishments are understood by members of their administrative and teaching staff. In particular we draw attention to the unwillingness of the majority of these employees to name or recognize specific forms of institutional inequality. Following critical pedagogy literature we argue that the Chilean education system reproduces a fear of talk among teachers working in areas with high density indigenous populations, which obscures unequal social structures and opportunities for specific (class, gender, ethnic) groups in school contexts. Based on data from 12 interviews with school staff and observations from four schools in southern Chile, we analyze how intersecting inequality is discursively reduced by predominantly white teachers to individual deficit, de-politicized geographical problems of access to schooling, and the normalizing of low achievement across schools with students from similar backgrounds.     

部分经济发达国家教育改革的共性和趋势

在现代信息技术广泛普及,世界各国相继走向对外开放的形势下,美国、英国、日本等经济发达国家的教育改革也出现了相互吸收、相互借鉴的局面。在提高教育地位,增加教育经费投入,重视教师作用,加强教师培训,改善教师待遇,开展教育科学研究,改革教与学的关系,探索培养人才新途径等诸方面呈现出一些共同的特点和发展趋势。这些共同点和未来的走向,为发展中国家的教育改革提供了理论上的参考。     

论列宁关于社会主义文化建设的思想

列宁对苏俄社会主义文化建设非常重视 ,不仅要求提高全民文化素质 ,而且要求党政干部要搞好文化建设 ,要边学习边工作 ,把文化建设作为监督党政职能和建设苏俄社会主义的关键。同时列宁对人才培养和教师工作也非常重视 ,列宁对社会主义文化建设进行的理论探索和可操作性研究 ,对我们的社会主义文化建设具有重要的现实指导意义     

实践取向的高职《幼儿园教育活动设计与指导》课程改革——以《幼儿园科学教育活动设计与指导》课改为例

21世纪幼儿教师角色的形象诉求要由“技术性操作者”转变为“反思性实践者”。现有高职《幼儿园教育活动设计与指导》课程体系已经明显不能适应当前高职学前教育培养“反思性实践者”人才的要求,对其进行改革已势在必行。围绕“实践”从重定课程性质与目标、重组课程内容、重构教学模式和重订评价体系四个方面来改革《幼儿园活动设计与指导》课程是当前高职学前教师教育应该关注、研究和解决的一项重要课题,以此来满足社会对“反思性实践者”人才的需要。     

Should we provide oral health training for staff caring for people with intellectual disabilities in community based residential care? A cost-effectiveness analysis

Oral health training is often introduced into community-based residential settings to improve the oral health of people with intellectual disabilities (ID). There is a lack of appropriate evaluation of such programs, leading to difficulty in deciding how best to allocate scarce resources to achieve maximum effect. This article reports an economic analysis of one such oral health program, undertaken as part of a cluster randomized controlled trial. Firstly, we report a cost-effectiveness analysis of training care-staff compared to no training, using incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs). Effectiveness was measured as change in knowledge, reported behaviors, attitude and self-efficacy, using validated scales (K&BAS). Secondly, we costed training as it was scaled up to include all staff within the service provider in question. Data were collected in Dublin, Ireland in 2009. It cost between €7000 and €10,000 more to achieve modest improvement in K&BAS scores among a subsample of 162 care-staff, in comparison to doing nothing. Considering scaled up first round training, it cost between €58,000 and €64,000 to train the whole population of staff, from a combined dental and disability service perspective. Less than €15,000–€20,000 of this was additional to the cost of doing nothing (incremental cost). From a dental perspective, a further, second training cycle including all staff would cost between €561 and €3484 (capital costs) and €5815 (operating costs) on a two yearly basis. This study indicates that the program was a cost-effective means of improving self-reported measures and possibly oral health, relative to doing nothing. This was mainly due to low cost, rather than the large effect. In this instance, the use of cost effectiveness analysis has produced evidence, which may be more useful to decision makers than that arising from traditional methods of evaluation. There is a need for CEAs of effective interventions to allow comparison between programs. Suggestions to reduce cost are presented.     

The relationship between societal change and rising support for gender egalitarianism among men and women: Results from counterfactual analyses in the Netherlands, 1979–2012

This study examines the relationship between important social, cultural, economic, and demographic changes and the rise of support for gender egalitarianism within the Dutch population between 1979 and 2012. Cohort replacement, educational expansion, secularization, and the feminization of the labor force are important processes that have taken place in western societies in ways that may have fostered support for gender egalitarianism. Using unique data from 16 repeated cross-sectional surveys in the Netherlands, we estimate age-period-cohort regression models, and the outcomes are subsequently applied in counterfactual simulation designs. Our results show that the social, cultural, economic, and demographic changes explain only a small part of the modest rise in support for gender egalitarianism for men, while they provide a much better explanation of the stronger rise among women. Especially the replacement of older female cohorts by younger ones seems to have propelled support for gender egalitarianism among women throughout the years.     

Do grandparents matter? A multigenerational perspective on educational attainment in Taiwan

In response to the growing interest in multigenerational effects, we investigate whether grandparents’ education affects grandchildren’s transitions to academic high school and university in Taiwan. Drawing on social capital literature, we consider potential heterogeneity of the grandparent effect by parents’ characteristics and propose that grandparents’ education yields differential effects depending on parents’ education. Our results show tenuous effects of grandmother’s and grandfather’s years of schooling, net of parents’ education. However, the positive interaction effects between grandparents’ and parents’ years of schooling indicate that grandparents’ additional years of schooling are more beneficial to students with more educated parents than for students with less educated parents. The diverging gap in the likelihood of attending academic high school or university between students with parents in higher and lower ends of the educational hierarchy, along with increased levels of grandparents’ education, supports our hypothesis that grandparents’ education augments educational inequality by parents’ education.