Editorial
Welcome to the first edition for 2008 which promises to be a busy and fruitful year for the journal. Already I have plans to attend the UCEA conference as a speaker with Professor Calabrese and other colleagues –hopefully the outcome will be published in the journal later in 2008. Also I hope to attend Shenyang University to bring closer links between that University and the journal with colleagues I met at APERA in 2006.
For this issue there are the normal six papers from around the world –UK, USA, Canada, and Singapore.
The first is a joint contribution from London Metropolitan University involving Roger Bennett, Wendy Mousley and Rehnuma Ali-Choudhury. Professor Bennett and colleagues examine the influences of certain factors that help determine students’ assessments of the usefulness of a higher education orientation unit in a large post 1992 university. All students in a university business studies department who had completed a compulsory orientation unit were asked to fill in a questionnaire that explored specific personal characteristics that a review of prior academic literature had identified as potentially relevant to the explanation of how well or badly students responded to the unit. Students who claimed that they obtained the greatest advantage from the unit tended to be academic individuals who were highly committed to being a student,intrinsically motivated to study, high in academic self concept, academically able and well prepared prior to entry for student life. This was not necessarily the profile of the students the unit was designed to assist. The outcomes of the study imply that a one size fits all approach to the design of study skills units might not be appropriate.
The second paper is similarly a joint effort from Roselie McDevitt, Catherine Giapponi and Norman Solomon of Fairfield University, USA. The paper is headed“Strategy revitalization in academe: a balanced scorecard approach”. The paper presents a unique version of the balanced scorecard using a case study approach and uses the experiences of the faculty of a business school to describe the process and benefits of developing a custom balanced scorecard. The scorecard revitalized the faculty and resulted in a process model of organizational change based on the balanced scorecard that can be used in many academic divisions. This version helped to establish a programme of continuous development and facilitated the formulation of strategic initiatives. The documentation provided in the scorecard supports the requests for increased budgets and grant applications.
In the next paper Professor Mau of Wichita State University writes on “Job satisfaction and career persistence of beginning teachers” in which the purpose of the study was to examine this tendency. Four hundred and fifty-one tenth grade students who aspired to be teachers from a nationally representative sample of tenth grade students were examined over a ten year period regarding career choice. Students who persisted in teaching were compared to students who did not persist with regard to job satisfaction. Students who persisted in teaching were significantly more satisfied than both those who did not persist and those with non-teaching careers. Three hundred and ninety-eight beginning teachers surveyed in 2000 were also examined regarding their job satisfaction. Results suggested that beginning teachers were more satisfied with their jobs than those in other occupations. Teachers were significantly more intrinsically satisfied than non-teachers. Teachers who had teaching licenses also reported being more satisfied than those who did not have licenses. A job satisfaction model was tested using clusters of variables as guided by social cognitive theory. The social contextual factors i.e. race, socio-economic status, teaching license, parents’ education, and occupation were among the best predictors of this model.
Dr Usman writes on the assessment of the basic primary education and Koranic schools in Nigeria. Nigeria’s current universal basic education on primary schooling targets Muslim Almajiri street boys for basic literacy acquisition. This paper examines the policy’s management implementation practices and challenges, as providing policy options that may minimize discrepancies for effective management.
In a joint piece on the impact of public/private partnerships affecting a new primary school in the UK, Helen Gibson and Brent Davies examine the implications of the partnership for education delivery, attainment, attitude, behaviour and attendance. The reasons for the partnership’s apparent success are identified, and transferable lessons are extracted. Barriers to the success of the partnership are also explored and suggestions for improvement are made.
The final paper is from Dr Bee Bee of Nanyang University Singapore. Her paper is on curriculum change as there is a need to research the processes of educational change in Singapore as rapid changes can result in complex problems. This is a study on academics’ involvement in implementing curriculum change in an engineering school in a Singapore University. Previously students undertook a one year common engineering curriculum when they enrolled in a Bachelor of Engineering programme at the University. This has been extended to a two year common engineering programme. The study examines the academic staff’s collaboration and communication in implementing the curriculum change and also examines the organizational factors that influence the academics’communication in a curriculum change.
Brian Roberts
