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- Dedze, Indra
(författare)
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Reading ability of Latvian students : results from an international study
- 1999
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Reading literacy is becoming a crucial skill for the success in the modern society. Since Latvia is an industrialized country, with a relatively small population, it is of a crucial importance that the educational system produces well literate people. This is important both in order to sustain and to improve country's social and economic development.The International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) was organized in the 1960's as a non-governmental and cooperative organization to conduct comparative studies concentrating on educational policies and practices in order to improve learning within and across systems of education. The IEA Reading Literacy Study was the first national study in the field of comparative education carried out in Latvia in early 90's. About 1000 nine-year-old students from 54 classrooms and 800 fourteen-year-old students from 53 schools participated in the study. The study provides us with important information about student reading habits, home background, as well as about teaching strategies. Whenever it is possible, an international comparison is given.Two-level structural equation modeling is applied in a reanalysis of the IEA Reading Literacy Study data from Latvia. The aim is to present the relations between the factors derived from student home conditions and reading performance factors at the individual level and at the classroom level. The results shows that at the nine-year-old student classroom level a general socioeconomic factor has rather high connection with the reading performance, while at the individual level factors called "good reader" and "reading resources" had a strong effect upon student reading achievement. In the fourteen-year-old students group the factors "liking school" and "good reader" have influence upon reading achievement on student level, and the factors "liking school" and "reading resources" - on the classroom level.Since the current situation in beginning reading instruction in Latvia is still influenced by the educational policies and practices that were in use during the Soviet era, the analyses on the beginning reading instruction in Latvia is given. Basic terms and categories such as the definition of reading, reading models, and goals of reading instruction are presented as they are used and understood in Latvia and compared with those described in Russia and the literature on reading research in other countries.The study has notable implications for teachers and policy makers, as well as for future research.
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- Kostoulas-Makrakis, Nelly
(författare)
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Language maintenance or shift? : a study of Greek background students in Sweden
- 1995
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study explores and illustrates the process of language maintenance and shift among greek background students in Sweden, who attend home language instruction. The results show that students' attitudes learning greek were positive. The great majority of students indicated a strong in-group identification. Although the picture revealed in this study is one which in many respects seems to favour language maintenance, it is clear that there is a process of gradual shift taking place among the second generation greek students.
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- Odora Hoppers, Catherine A
(författare)
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Structural Violence as a Constraint to African Policy Formation in the 1990s : Respositioning Education in International Relations
- 1998
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study is a meta-analysis of the manner in which global relations impact on national level policy spaces and policy formation. As the International Financial Institutions tighten their grip through the Structural Adjustment Programmes over African countries, and donors steadily shift their ground and push conditionality beyond economic policy into institutional arrangements, the issue of political sovereignty of African countries, and of indirect rule through aid becomes a key concern.Using conceptual and analytical tools developed in social psychology, sociology, peace studies, linguistics and political economy, the study challenges the neutrality of the combined thrust by the IFIs and donors, and argues that genuine progress and recovery of Africa is hampered not by the presence of the state, but by the structural violence so necessary for the maintenance of western hegemony.The policy domain is chosen as a point of focus because policy-making defines the functions of the state; and the policy arena is one in which state policies are objectified and elaborated. Precisely because the policy arena is one in which values, ideologies and principles are given concrete expression, it is also this space that, in a context of the hegemony of neo-colonial relations, is targeted for effective control. As the analysis of the pattern of happenings at the United Nations reveal, the more the poor countries attempt to create an alternative, the higher the level of vigilance on the part of the west to contain, derail, or neutralize it.Development is thus exposed as not being anymore about how a people might develop according to their own definition, in their diversity, but rather, about becoming transmogrified into an inverted mirror of other's identity, a mirror that belittles them and sends them to the end of the queue. Modern aid is also revealed to be far from the good Samaritan binding the wounds of the man who fell victim to the robbers, but as a cold calculating instrument for the imposition of "good conduct", subjecting the needy to the cold gaze of the helper, demanding of the crier, scientific, ideological, and externally verified proof of need.The study holds that by maintaining a silence over whose normative heritage is being transmitted through education, by avoiding to discuss the philosophical basis for education, and by evading the issue of self-reliance as a core imperative for any development, educators have voted to participate in this framework by encouraging the misrecognition of this violence.The study calls for a second liberation in Africa, a project of conscientizing the west, a renewed interest in policy studies, and a focus on dialogue as a method, as a strategy and as an objective at all levels of human interaction. Most of all, it reiterates the plea to give the African continent credibility, and thereby a better chance to consolidate itself and prepare for a genuine recovery.
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- Romanus, Ejiaga
(författare)
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Higher Education and the Labor Market : A Study of University Access and Graduate Employment Opportunities in Nigera
- 1997
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This study examines problems of access to university education and graduate employment opportunities in Nigeria. Specifically, the study investigates issues of equality of opportunity in university education, quotas in admissions, geographical dispersion of higher educational institutions, student finance, university resources, student characteristics, university output, and the transition of graduates to the labor market. The research design of the study incorporates historiography and cross-sectional perspective with more in-depth case studies of two universities. The case studies have been selected based on specific geopolitical, historical, economic, and cultural factors in the country.The findings suggest that in order to curb the general problems of university expansion, the availability of the following list of relative indices are important in making admissions decisions: ratio of acceptances to applications, student/academic staff ratio, rate of drop-out, number of graduates in relation to manpower demand by field of specialization, availability of teaching and research equipment, unit cost per student, and the proportion of accepted applicants from the different ethnic groups.The results show that access to higher education, particularly in Business Administration, is highly restrictive and elitist. The socio-economic background of the sampled respondents by parental occupation and education shows that 83 percent come from the high-income groups. The study also found gender, age, and regional gaps in university education, and this has implications for student recruitment, assistance, geographical spread of university facilities, and job opportunities.With regard to the relevance of university education to employment, more than 70 percent of the graduates indicated that they did not have the training that employers would have liked them to have had. About 65 percent of the employers reported that good academic performance bears no direct relationship to satisfactory job performance. The findings suggest that governments and institutions might consider the integration of manpower planning with educational planning. In Nigeria, manpower planning has not been effective due to lack of a comprehensive employment strategy and, consequently, graduate supply has always outstripped labor market needs. The results show that various means could be used to assist the transition from education to work. Newspaper advertisement and family contacts were considered important sources of obtaining first employment.
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- Slenning, Kah, 1955-
(författare)
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Future School Management : Do Plans and Needs Match? A Comparative Study with Examples from Four OECD-Countries
- 1999
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overriding aim of this study is to focus a factor affecting the readiness of the education systems of four OECD countries (or, to be quite correct, three countries and one state in the U.S.) to meet and adapt to changing demands and expectations on educational outcome. The factor in focus is the role, work and competence of local school managers. The countries included in the study are the state of California, England, Norway and Sweden.The study compares the actual plans as expressed in official policy documents such as curricula, national development plans and legislation with what can be derived from literature and interviews with key informants within and outside the education systems. Comparisons are made between the different sources of information within each country, and between the countries. Since a key element in the role of the local school managers that has developed over the last decade is decentralization or devolution, a study of questionnaire data from active head teachers has also been carried out, in order to depict the degree of local responsibility for a number of aspects of management, and the direction of the development - towards more or less local responsibility.One assumption that creates a foundation for the comparison is that there may be discrepancies between what the actual official plans of each country say, and what the development needs are judged to be by literature and the key informants, and that such discrepancies, if they exist, may hamper the coherence of development force.Since the study deals with four countries the ambition can not be a complete coverage of all aspects brought up in the study. The study concentrates on examples from the four countries in the comparison of development plans and assumed needs. The method of the study is mainly qualitative, but with certain elements of quantitative data sampling. Information is mainly derived from relevant research literature in several disciplines, official documents concerning development of education, a rather large number of interviews with key informants from the four countries and the above mentioned questionnaires.Results of the study indicate rather unclear couplings between different organizational levels within each country, from national/state level to the individual school and its management. Many official documents have a content of a surprisingly concrete and trivial level, and many with a primary focus on human resources development of the work force for reasons of national competitiveness in a global economy. The key informants, on the other hand, reveal a much broader perspective on education and its value to society and the individuals.Differences between the countries when it comes to education development are surprisingly small, despite other differences between them. The future needs for competence of local school managers are quite comparable between the countries, with only small differences that can be attributed to national traditions and specific unique situations in certain countries. A set of future competence demands can be described.It is questioned if possibly official documents underestimate the magnitude of possible changes in education in the near future. In several cases there seems to be reason to fear a development of fragmentation of society and a lower degree of shared values, with possible social conflict as a result.
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