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Are policies to increase women’s share among university professors effective? The importance of gender equality on the labor market has been well established, but our understanding of what kind of policy is effective to increase the share of women is still unclear. Three sets of factors explain women’s low shares at higher job levels, notably individual, cultural, and structural or institutional perspectives, and policies to increase the proportion of women therefore should address these factors. This paper aims to investigate if they do so and if they are effective. We investigated the efficacy of gender equality policy measures in all 14 universities in the Netherlands, implemented between 2000 and 2007. Based on documents and interviews, 19 measures were identified that could be classified according to the three perspectives. The university with the most measures applied four times more measures than the one with the least measures. The more measures a university applied in the cultural perspective, the more likely it also applied measures in the other two perspectives. Whereas the HR managers and policy makers at universities reported skepticism and lack of evaluations, our study reveals a positive relationship between policy measures and the reduction of the glass ceiling and between policies in the cultural perspective and the increase of the proportion of women among professors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the Second Conference of the European Philosophy of Science Association, EPSA09, held in VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands in 2009. This was reportedly in tradition of organizing biennial meetings to discuss philosophy of science. Individuals contributed papers and also symposia were also programmed. Three invited speakers from different countries and different subfields also gave plenary lectures.

Nowadays many schools in higher education implement problem-based learning to foster active learning processes by students. In some schools with a number of years of experience with this approach, phenomena can be observed which indicate signs of wear. The implementation of a large-scale innovation such as problem-based learning (PBL) seems to provoke different activities and attitudes in those actors who are most involved. Students and staff members seem to behave in a way which could be counterproductive to the development of self-directed learning. In the first part of this paper, we briefly describe the cognitive psychological background of PBL. In the second part various adjustments observed in problem-based curricula and their effects on students’ learning are analyzed. Arguments are presented about adverse effects on the implementation of this educational innovation. Special attention is given to teachers’ concerns. In the third part suggestions are made about ways to revitalize PBL processes as well as suggestions about effecting educational innovations on a more solid basis [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]