Search

In this work, a bibliometric analysis of the investigations of the last 54 years focused on the teaching of topology and its applications in the learning of other areas of knowledge was carried out. The articles that appear in the SCOPUS database were taken into account under the search criteria of the words topology and teaching, connected with the Boolean expression AND in the search field ABS. As a result, 329 articles were obtained which, based on the PRISMA methodology, were reduced to 74 papers. In them publication trends, impact of publications, citation frequencies, among others, were compared. In addition, its use was identified for learning topology at different levels of training, areas of knowledge where this discipline is most applied and strategies used to teach these applications.

For over two decades now, the application of Citizen Science to Education has been evolving, and fundamental topics, such as the drivers of motivation to participate in Citizen Science projects, are still under discussion. Some recent developments, though, like the use of Artificial Intelligence to support data collection and validation, seem to point to a clear-cut divergence from the mainstream research path. The objective of this paper is to summarise the development trajectory of research on Citizen Science in Education so far, and then shed light on its future development, to help researchers direct their efforts towards the most promising open questions in this field. We achieved these objectives by using the lens of the Affordance-Actualisation theory and the Main Path Analysis method.

Several studies have been published on disengaged test respondents, and others have analyzed disengaged survey respondents separately. For many large-scale assessments, students answer questionnaire and test items in succession. This study examines the percentage of students who continuously engage in disengaged responding behaviors across sections in a low-stakes assessment. The effects on calculated scores of filtering students, based on their responding behaviors, are also analyzed. Data of this study came from the 2015 administration of PISA. For data analysis, frequencies and percentages of engaged students in the sessions were initially calculated using students' response times. To investigate the impact of filtering disengaged respondents on parameter estimation, three groups were created, namely engaged in both measures, engaged only in the test, and engaged only in the questionnaire. Next, several validity checks were performed on each group to verify the accuracy of the classifications and the impact of filtering student groups based on their responding behavior. The results indicate that students who are disengaged in tests tend to continue this behavior when responding to the questionnaire items in PISA. Moreover, the rate of continuity of disengaged responding is non-negligible as can be seen from the effect sizes. On the other hand, removing disengaged students in both measures led to higher or nearly the same performance ratings compared to the other groups. Researchers analyzing the dataset including achievement tests and survey items are recommended to review disengaged responses and filter out students who are continuously showing disengaged responding before performing further statistical analysis.

Globalisation and policy transfer in education make it incumbent upon decision makers to prioritise among competing policy options, select policy initiatives that are appropriate for their national contexts, and understand how system-specific factors moderate the relationship between those policies and student outcomes. This study used qualitative comparative analysis and correlational analyses to explore these relationships with publicly available data on socio-economic, cultural, and education conditions, and their association with PISA 2015 results in 49 countries. Findings show that gender and income equality, human development, and individualism were outcome-enabling conditions for PISA 2015 results, and gender equality was the most consistent of these conditions. These factors significantly moderated the relationships between education policy and PISA results. Implications for the identification of meaningful peer countries for comparative educational research, policy transfer, and the future expansion of PISA are discussed.

Academic libraries, apart from their main function, which is to provide information services to academic communities, may also perform a number of social roles in the broad meaning of the term. Accordingly, they now tend to serve as the third place offering inclusion and animation activities to academic as well as local communities (including potential students) and to groups in risk of social exclusion (immigrants, persons with disabilities, senior citizens, etc.) or in need of various kinds of care and support. However, for libraries to be able to fulfil those tasks, they need properly trained staff who not only have the required competencies but also the right social attitudes. The paper presents an analysis of the social attitudes of academic librarians from twenty countries across the world as compared to the personnel of other types of libraries. The level of individual social capital, activity in social networks, aspirations in life and social and civic engagement were investigated. It was noted that the respondents tend to undervalue the importance of the work done by libraries for local communities. At the same time, the research showed that academic librarians have a somewhat lower level of individual social capital and trust than public librarians and less extensive social networks. Nonetheless, they are open to relationships with others, which enables them to engage in various social projects.

In this study, we investigated factors predictive of disconnection, or not being in education, employment, or training (NEET), among young adults with at least a 2-year college degree. We also explored the extent to which disconnection influences civic participation and well-being among NEETs with and without college degrees. The authors used 2012 and 2015 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) data from the Survey of Adult Skills in the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) for 29 countries, including the United States, along with US 2012 data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), collected by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Results highlight that college-educated individuals whose parents have low levels of educational attainment actually have a higher likelihood of becoming NEET relative to college-educated individuals whose parents are more highly educated. Study findings also emphasize the influence of economic and geographic differences (country-level for OECD and county-level for United States) on NEET rates, in addition to the extent to which mothers have a higher likelihood and fathers have a lower likelihood of being NEET relative to their childless peers and the influence of country-level family leave policies on the odds of being NEET across the OECD. College field of study also emerges as an important influence on disconnection across the 29 OECD countries in the study, but not in the United States separately. Finally, comparing results for college-educated NEETs and NEETs without degrees, we found that higher education appears to reduce the likelihood of community disengagement and reports of poor health among NEETs across the OECD countries. However, this is not the case within the United States where NEETs are less likely to be engaged in their communities and more likely to describe themselves as in poor health regardless of their educational attainment.

Education is the core of the factors that improved people for a better lifestyle and increases the level of society' development. Quality education is one of the most vital goals of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) due to actualizing these factors. Using relational network data envelopment analysis (DEA), which have three interrelated substages, this current paper computes the educational economy efficiency of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries bearing in mind the characteristics related to SDGs. The contribution of our study is the use of a novel approach to computing the educational economy efficiency using relational network DEA with GAMS. Even though some interesting differences reveal in the efficiency of the countries, the findings show that countries with high-efficiency scores are clustered around countries like Latvia, Slovenia, and Korea.

Identifying illicit behavior in survey research is inherently problematic, since self-reports are untrustworthy. We argue that fraudulent interviewers can, however, be identified through statistical deviance of the distributional parameters of their interviews. We document that a high proportion of the variation in the data is due to the interviewer. In addition, we show that the incidence of interviewer-induced anomalies is strongly associated with the perceived level of corruption across the countries participating in the European Social Survey 2010. The major implication of the findings is that the data from some countries cannot be used fruitfully for cross-national comparative research.

We examine recent research across countries and cultures in regard to the issues related to the formation of gifted and talented education perspectives, policies, and practices. Many modern cultures and subcultures have developed formal and informal definitions of what it means to be gifted and talented, and when we compare the perceptions, policies, and practices across nations, we discover very different constructs of intelligence and ability. These understandings of giftedness and gifted and talented education can be grouped into four binary dimensions, scholarly versus co-curricular capabilities, aptitude versus achievement, nature versus nurture, and individualistic versus collective, that have significant implications for policy and practice. These constructs can serve as a foundation for countries that are looking to formalize or expand their gifted and talented education models or can be used to challenge the norms of established systems. We put forward recommendations to address some of the challenges in advancing gifted education cross-nationally, an area that is often assumed to introduce risks of enlarging social inequity. We also provide a cross-national matrix that captures known elements of gifted education policies and programs from over 20 subnational jurisdictions, countries, and world regions.

Introduction: Families have a significant role in the lives of people with intellectual disabilities and challenging behaviors. However, it is not clear how actively families are involved when people with intellectual disabilities and challenging behaviors are living in out-of-home care. This scoping review explored the frequency and type of family involvement in the application of a person-centered approach in the care for people with intellectual disabilities and challenging behaviors. Methods: Authors conducted electronic searches through six databases: Embase, Medline, Web of Science, PsycINFO, Cochrane Central, and Google Scholar (2005 to 2019) and evaluated relevant publications. Results: Based on the 15 articles identified, only five articles report on family involvement. In addition, frequency of contact, and how family is involved appears to differ between different person-centered approaches. Conclusion: More active family involvement in person-centered approaches for people with intellectual disabilities and challenging behaviors is recommended.

In large-scale assessments, performance differences across different groups are regularly found. These group differences (e.g., gender differences) are often relevant for educational policy decisions and measures. However, the formation of these group differences usually remains unclear. We propose an approach for investigating this formation by considering behavioral process measures as mediating variables between group membership and performance on the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment complex-problem solving (CPS) items. We found that across all investigated countries interactive behavior can fully explain gender differences in CPS, but cannot explain differences between students with and without a migration background. However, in some countries these results differ from the cross-country results. Our results indicate that process measures derived from log data are useful for further investigating and explaining performance differences between girls and boys and students with and without migration background.

International businesses face a difficult task when trying to decide where to place or expand a business that could be located anywhere in the world. Each country is a complex system of human capabilities, technical systems, [infrastructure bases, laws, cultures and economic systems. How can a company know which country is best for it today, and even more importantly, which country will grow into an appropriate location for future business opportunities? Several studies offer insights into how to make site selection decisions (O'Farrell & Wood, 1994; Papadopoulos et al., 2002; Rothaermel et al., 2006) but the complexity of the data required makes initial analysis across many countries problematic. Most businesses, trying to predict an ideal country or sequence of countries to enter, are left to simple rules of thumb or decision models using limited criteria (Górecka & Szalucka, 2013; Alexander et al., 2011). A wide variety of country data of varying reliability and efficacy are frequently used (Rahman, 2003). Many of the largest companies have developed specialized teams with sophisticated models for site selection. However, for smaller companies finding reliable, consistently measured data they can interpret and analyze in ways that provide useful insights is a challenge. This article introduces the Social Progress Index, launched in April 2013 at the 10th annual Skoll World Forum held at the University of Oxford (The Origins, 2015). The Social Progress Index is unique because it is the most comprehensive framework developed for measuring social progress and the first to measure social progress independently of GDP or other economic variables (Porter, 2015; Keohane, 2015). Three cases have been chosen to demonstrate the usefulness of the Social Progress Index for site selection in three very different circumstances.

In this paper, I examine whether generalized trust and education, as well as social security policies of welfare state institutions matter for cross-national differences in subjective well-being (SWB), because knowledge on this issue is still lacking. For this purpose I integrated the insights of two sociological theories: Social Function Production theory and Actor-Centred Institutionalism. Based on these theoretical notions we derived several hypotheses, which I tested using multilevel analysis of the data from the European Social Survey (2006), in a sample of 37,237 respondents from 22 European countries. My findings indicate that various extensiveness of social security policies matter for the level of SWB, and for the impact of education on SWB. I found negative impact of low education on SWB in all countries, except in Northern and Western European countries. This might suggest that social security policies of the latter countries have diminished the negative impact of low education on SWB. Moreover, my findings indicate positive relationship between individual education and generalized trust; as well as between generalized trust and SWB in countries with all five types of social security policies.

A unique challenge for organizations is in leading diverse, dispersed teams whose members are motivated to work independently, but are willing to collaborate. The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of how nuanced variations in motivational patterns influences the relationship between work satisfaction and virtual team effectiveness. A sequential, mixed methods design was used to analyze and explain the moderating effects of motivational orientation on this relationship. In the first, quantitative phase, participating virtual team members completed an online survey with items comprising the five motivation source scales from the Motivation Sources Inventory, work satisfaction, and eleven variables measuring utilization of virtual team effectiveness attributes from the Virtual Teams Survey. Seven hypotheses were tested, with support found for three of the hypotheses. Work satisfaction and utilization of the virtual team effectiveness attributes were found to be positively correlated. Support was also found for hypotheses that the relationship between work satisfaction and utilization of the virtual team effectiveness attributes will be stronger for virtual team members (VTMs) with low self-concept external and / or moderate or high goal internalization patterns. In the second, qualitative phase, follow-up interviews were conducted to support and provide rationale for the quantitative results. Qualitative analysis of interviews revealed three major themes focused on concerns regarding team leadership, organizational support, and technology. Viewed in context with the quantitative results, the themes suggest that work satisfaction may be improved for most VTMs, regardless of motivation pattern, by strengthening leadership, aligning rewards with goals, and enhancing the technology used for team communication.

This article explores how higher education institutions (HEIs) internationalize, employing information on the internationalization activities (IA), context and organizational characteristics of 431 HEIs from 33 European countries. A latent cluster analysis identifies three distinct clusters of HEIs with distinct portfolios of IA: "basic, academic and entrepreneurial." The "basic" portfolio includes the most common IA, whereas IA requiring larger organizational capacity are rare. The "entrepreneurial" portfolio distinguishes from the "academic" portfolio as it also includes IA aimed to attract resources. We explore what contextual and organizational traits characterize HEIs with different IA portfolios. Small HEIs tend to display a "basic" portfolio, without national variations. On the contrary, strong national variations exist in the frequency of "academic" and "entrepreneurial" portfolios, which strongly relate to the actual and potential importance of tuition fees as a source of revenues.

Higher education systems globally have seen major increases in women's participation and the overall trend in OECD countries has been a transition from the traditional male majority in enrolments to a substantial female majority. Prompted by a recent reversal of this trend, this paper explores gender differences in participation in higher education in 27 OECD countries between 1971 and 2015. While increased participation by women was thought to be part of the solution to persistent gender inequalities we argue that this is not an inevitable outcome. Our argument is based on an analysis of changes in the gender composition of the student population, using available secondary data. We explore how changing gender differentials are linked to the concurrent massification of HE, changing distribution of enrolments by field of study, changes in sex segregation by field, features of national education systems and wider social structural differences related to gender. Our analysis examines the complex interaction between discipline-specific levels of sex segregation and overall levels of gender parity. We argue that that sex segregation needs to be considered alongside women's long-standing higher participation rates to understand why the latter has not triggered a transformation in the gendered division of labour.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to analyse institutional strategy documents relating to technology-enhanced learning. Design/methodology/approach: In total, 84 documents were sampled from 71 leading higher education institutions (HEIs), identified through the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings 2018. Qualitative content analysis with a directed approach was used to analyse the strategy documents. The specific theory used was disruptive innovation. The use of "innovation", or variants thereof, was counted in each document. Ten case studies from the sample were used for content analysis. Findings: Technology-enhanced learning-related strategy documents are conservative, advocating the more efficient use of existing technologies, or the incremental enhancement of existing technologies, but not transformation through technology. Originality/value: By evaluating the extent to which selected institutional strategies engage with innovation in technology-enhanced learning, this study argues HEIs advocate sustaining innovation or efficiency innovation to a greater extent than disruptive innovation.

In recent years, play-based learning (PBL) has attracted attention, debate and controversy across different national contexts. There is no definitional consensus which may have undesirable consequences for enacting its potential in professional practice. The aim of our study was to synthesize international research on ECE practitioners' views on PBL. Based on a meta-synthesis of 62 studies from 24 national contexts, we show that they have differing views on the degree of conceptual compatibility between play and learning. While they may adopt numerous roles in PBL, they also express uncertainties as to how and when to get involved. Lastly, practitioners report on experiencing many challenges in enacting PBL, most importantly, policy and curricular delivery pressure. Throughout our review, we underscore both general trends and local nuances.

In this study, international research collaboration (IRC) and international research orientation (IRO) have been studied at the micro-level of individual academics from the university sector (N = 8,466, 11 European systems). Both were studied cross-nationally, cross-disciplinarily, and cross-generationally. This study differs from most existing internationalization literature in its sample (Europe) and focus (patterns of internationalization in research), using more standard methods (a multivariate model approach). It addresses questions about the patterns of IRC and IRO, international publishing, and the predictors of IRC, or what makes some European academics more prone to collaborating with international colleagues in research than others. In the context of changing incentive and reward systems in European academic science, which are becoming more output oriented, it is ever more important for individual academics to cooperate internationally (as well as to co-publish internationally). "Internationalists" increasingly compete with "locals" in university hierarchies of prestige and for access to project-based research funding across Europe. Evidence is presented that co-authoring publications internationally is still a rare form of research internationalization in Europe (50.8% of academics co-author publications internationally). However, as compared with other world regions, the percentage of European academics collaborating internationally in research (63.8%) is very high. A striking cross-national differential within the youngest European generation of academics was found, which may be a strong barrier to intra-European research collaboration in the future.

This article examines the extent to which parental socioeconomic status (SES) affects the likelihood of a child becoming a top-performing student, offering an international perspective by reporting this relationship in 31 developed countries. The impact of 3 important educational system characteristics (differentiation in terms of early tracking, standardisation, and private schooling) on the relationship between parental SES and top performance was determined. We employed multilevel logistic regression models on data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 (N = 216,980) to reveal that children with low parental SES have a lower probability of becoming a top-performing student than those with high parental SES, although this association differs between countries. The negative relationship between a disadvantaged parental background and top performance was not affected by the educational system characteristics under investigation.

This article examines the long-run effect of higher education, measured in average years of tertiary schooling, on the level and growth rate of national per capita income. It uses an improved dataset on educational attainments which not only reduces measurement error but also overcomes data comparability issues and allows us to estimate the long-run effect of human capital through higher education on economic development. Using unique long panel data for 36 advanced and emerging economies spanning over the period 1870-2010, we find that higher education has a positive and significant effect on the level and the growth rate of national per capita income. Specifically, our empirical results indicate that a 1% increase in educational attainment at higher education level would raise the growth rate of per capita income by about 0.01% to 0.02% over a five-year period. That is, at the sample mean, an increase in average tertiary education by one year would raise output growth by about 6% to 11% in five years. We find that the returns to female education are lower than the returns to male education at tertiary schooling levels. Our results are robust to alternative specifications.

There has been significant growth recently in online learning and joint programmes of education involving collaborative partnerships between and among higher education institutions in different jurisdictions. Utilising an interdisciplinary team model (Care and Scanlan 2001), we describe in this article the process of collaboration among four European institutions in Austria, Ireland, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom in order to develop and deliver an accredited online course on the management of work-related stress for health and social care workers. This course was also one of the first to pilot a system of equivalency between two European vocational and higher education credit schemes to promote learner mobility and recognition of a new international qualification. Although this process of collaboration occurred within a pan-European context, important lessons may be drawn from this explanation that are of potential interest to the wider international audience.