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(1) Background: Teaching in today's schools asks teachers to foster self-regulated learning and digital competences in children and young people. In order to do so, teachers first need to acquire and use these competences themselves. (2) Methods: Based on a mixed-methods approach, the study investigates self-regulated learning in online courses of N = 129 preservice teachers at a German university. (3) Results and conclusions: Perceiving their digital readiness as generally high, preservice teachers appear to not overly self-regulate their learning in the online environment. Finally, preservice teachers' digital readiness was related only weakly to their online self-regulated learning. A discussion is offered which shows teacher education as a broader phenomenon and implies the need for professional development for teacher educators. Additionally, it is argued to link research on self-regulated learning more closely to research on online learning environments in teacher education.

This study investigates how personality and individual experiences influence decision-making processes during the transition into Higher Education (HE). It offers insights into application choices, where applicants employ different quantitative hedging strategies against non-admission. These strategies are assessed by the number of applications but also the search radius, leading to an alternative's inclusion into the application set. An empirical analysis of the usually unobserved application stage shows how these hedging strategies depend on applicants' perceptions of psychic costs and their socio-demographic backgrounds. This heterogeneity may explain varying participation rates for different subpopulations in a country with a large HE sector, such as Germany. An essential finding points to the relevance of earlier mobility experiences during adolescence, which may act as facilitators of subsequent student mobility. Providing adolescents with a stimulating mobility experience before they consider transitioning to university could thus be an avenue to increase participation chances of potentially disadvantaged groups.

The objective of the research is to investigate if certain demographics of students help explain four areas of potential improvements in predominantly short-term study abroad programs. These areas are motivation, experience enhancement, benefits from various learning activities, and students' concerns regarding their experience. Pre-trip and post-trip surveys were conducted using logistic regression model. Our results showed that participants of a longer-term program were more likely than those in the short-term program to be expanded in their cultural understanding and global outlook. In contrast to many studies, males were found to be more motivated than females by a desire to experience foreign culture. Students with a higher GPA were found to have a more enhanced academic experience than those with a lower GPA. Finally, participants from a monocultural background were found to have a more culturally enhanced experience than the multicultural ones. The results will help improve the quality of study abroad programs.

Transactional distance (TD), the perception of psychological distance between the student and his peers, his instructor/teacher, and the learning content, has long been a prominent construct in research on distance education. Today, distance education primarily takes place over the internet, with technology mediating engagement and communication. Because transactional distance in online distance learning will always rely on technologically-mediated communication or interaction, we argue that in order to get the full picture, this aspect of technological mediation needs to be considered. For this purpose, we introduce a new scale for measuring transactional distance between students and the learning technology (TDSTECH), comprised of two interrelated dimensions. Reliability, convergent, and discriminant validity suggest a suitable scale. Preliminary inferential analyses are conducted with multiple linear regression and mediation analysis. Regression models show that TDSTECH is the single most important predictor of satisfaction in this population. This may have important implications for practitioners trying design and facilitate satisfying online distance learning experiences. Also, mediator analysis reveals that TDSTECH mediates the relationship between TD student-teacher and satisfaction, but not for TD student-content. Surprisingly, TD student-student shows no significant relationship with satisfaction. Implications for practice and further research are discussed.

In this study we examine the determinants of and the relationship among economic knowledge, epistemological beliefs, and extrinsic and intrinsic motivation over the course of undergraduate studies in a sample of students of business and economics at a university in Germany. We found economic knowledge increased over the course of studies, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation declined, and students became more skeptical in their epistemological beliefs about the objectivity of economic content being taught in their courses. The students' level of economic knowledge was related to intrinsic motivation but unrelated to extrinsic motivation and epistemological beliefs. Furthermore, the students' tendency to become more skeptical over the course of their studies was mitigated by high levels of extrinsic motivation. The use of internationally established assessments such as the Test of Economic Literacy, developed by the Council of Economics Education, enables implications for higher education business and economics programs at the international level to be drawn from our findings.

According to Bronfenbrenner's socio-ecological model, school is an essential microsystem of the developing child. Schools provide important developmental contexts for children and adolescents, as they constitute environments that might either foster or evoke students' emotional instability. In particular, less is known about the precise and dynamic interplay of students' socioenvironmental aspects in school (i.e., sense of school belonging, social relationships with teachers and peers) and emotional instability (i.e., depressive symptoms, perceived stress, feelings of loneliness) during adolescence. To close this gap, this study examined within- and over-time cross-lagged associations based on data from a quantitative questionnaire-based survey of adolescent students (T1: N= 1088; Mage = 13.70, SD = 0.53) from 23 secondary schools in Brandenburg, Germany. Results of latent cross-lagged panel design supports the mutual relations for within-time associations, which is in line with Bronfenbrenner's model. However, only the over-time association between school belonging and teacher-student relationship was found to be reciprocal.

High dropout rates are still a problem with online training. It is strongly suggested that learner characteristics influence the decision to persist in an online course or to drop out. The study explored the differences in domain-specific prior knowledge, motivation, computer attitude, computer anxiety, and learning skills between dropouts and active learners who enrolled in a vocational online training about media pedagogy for teachers. The data were collected from 575 trainee teachers from which three groups were formed: (a) students who only registered (n = 72) and (b) students who started learning but failed to complete any of the course modules (n = 124) and (c) active students who completed at least one module (n = 379). A dropout rate of 34.1% was observed. In general, only small effects were found. Students dropping out were older, had less prior knowledge, and lower skills in arranging an adequate learning environment.

What features lead a student to choose sport science, chemistry, physics, computer science or musicology as their subject of study and the Saarland University Saarbrücken as their place of study? Empirical analysis shows that study conditions for students of chemistry, physics and music do not play an important role in selecting the place of study, but closeness to family and friends do. Only for students of sports or computer science are ranking results important/very important in making a decision. All students gave acquiring necessary theoretical knowledge for later life, differentiating themselves from competitors without degrees, and the expectation of better earnings as their reasons for choosing a subject. Where students' choice of studies was based on factors specific to the university, they reported higher satisfaction with their choices. Problems arising during the course of studies are generally attributed to the strenuous requirements of the studies.

This study sought to identify preservice teachers' perceptions of their student teaching abroad experience and its effectiveness in preparing them to be globally competent educators upon completion of their student teaching as well as two years after. Findings indicate that they perceive their experience to have been both advantageous and effective and that it enhanced their global-mindedness. More than two years after student teaching abroad the experience continues to have a personal and professional impact as they find themselves to be more global-minded and seeking opportunities to share their abroad experience.

Teachers' interest is a key influencing factor in geography class, development of curricula and writing textbooks and only little is known about it. A cross-sectional study along the lines of interest theory originating from educational psychology was carried out in Germany in the summer of 2015, in which 141 teachers at secondary schools completed a questionnaire about their interest in geography topics and regions. At the same time, 3400 students (ages 10-17) were surveyed. Teachers show high interest in a broad range of geography topics. They are very interested in natural disasters and topographic topics whereas there is only little interest in several traditional topics from the field of human geography. The significantly higher interests of teachers only partially correspond to those of students (e.g. natural disasters). Teachers have a high interest in (in descending order) the greater regions of Germany, Europe and outside Europe. Among students, regions outside Europe are placed first. Both groups show high interest in Western countries and low interest in Eastern regions on all scale levels. Gender turned out to be the most influential factor in interest, however not in the total amount of topics but rather in the subscales and individual topics and regions.

The results of international comparison studies such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) have initiated intense discussions about educational reforms in Germany. Although in-service and pre-service teachers are an essential part of such reforms, little is known about their attitudes towards PISA studies. The present study aims to fill this gap through the investigation of pre-service teachers' awareness, interest, perception, and attitudes towards PISA. A questionnaire was used to survey a sample of 107 university students who were participating in a teacher education program. The results reveal that 100% of the participants are aware of PISA. Nearly 69% of the participants think that the impact of PISA is rather high or very high, while 41% of them believe that PISA results are reliable. Accordingly, half of the participants seem to be interested in PISA results for their country. The present study discusses these findings in the light of the expected outcomes as proposed in standards for teacher education.

Despite a great deal of time and energy went into digitalisation of the world around us, education has been lagging behind. A question therefore arises to what extent higher education institutions should introduce e-learning as part of their programmes. The purpose of this study is to add to the body of knowledge on e-learning by examining perceptions and intentions of students regarding e-learning. There are two broader research objectives pursued in order to achieve the purpose. The first objective is to identify students' knowledge and perception of e-learning, along with their attitudes and experience with it. The second research objective is to assess readiness of students to engage in e-learning and determine their willingness to pay for it. This study uses mixed method research design. First, results of two focus groups are reported, followed by results of survey on 104 respondents in a country of Central Europe. Results show that, students are in general positively inclined towards e-learning and would be willing to take online courses. However, there are still some reservations connected to it and the preference is towards the blended format. In spite of e-learning's European roots, the majority of students do not want the full integration of Information Technology into the study process, meaning that the traditional learning methods combined with IT are preferred.

The alarming results of large studies such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP; National Center for Education Statistics, 2012) point to an urgent need for writing support and call for specific and effective methods to foster writing competencies. The main purpose of this paper is to describe an innovative peer-assisted approach designed to foster text composition. Topping's (2001) step-by-step-algorithm was converted into a board game consisting of highly structured and motivating materials in order to encourage struggling writers to work on their text production skills. Our concept is based on two effective instructional strategies: "direct instruction" (Kame'enui, Fien, & Korgesaar, 2013) and "positive role modeling" (Macklem, 2011). In addition to describing our concept, this paper reports on initial experiences with this method in two German secondary school classes. A total of 47 fifth-grade students and their teachers were involved in a formative evaluation of our approach as a means of identifying strengths and weaknesses as seen by the participants. The feedback of both students and teachers was encouraging, giving rise to the hope that the concept presented in this paper can be smoothly implemented into everyday classroom routines and serve as an aid for children and youth with learning disabilities (LD) and other struggling writers to improve on their text production abilities. Our study was a pilot study and, consequently, we are unable to provide information on how effective the intervention actually is. Summative evaluation of the performance gains will be the subject of future research.

This paper reports preliminary findings on students enrolled in a massive open online course, who were also assigned to work in groups. Part of a larger study on the effect of groups on retention and completion in MOOCs, the paper provides students' demographics (i.e., location, gender, education level, and employment status), and motivation for taking the course. Findings show that women outnumbered men and that students mostly enrolled into the course because of a friend. Indeed, research on MOOCs demonstrates that men outnumber women and that educational pursuit and professional development are the main motivators for taking MOOCs. Yet, this paper shows that when group work is included in a MOOC, women participate more. Furthermore, for students assigned to groups in a MOOC, friends are the principal incentive for enrolling into the course. These results are discussed in light of previous research, and implications for teaching and learning in online environments addressed.

Dissections of human organs and animals are an important part of medical and science education but students usually express negative emotions towards dissections. Some studies show a negative influence of disgust and anxiety on motivation, interest and achievement. Therefore, reducing anxiety and disgust should be an important aim. As humor can lead to lower anxiety in medical settings, we hypothesize that a kind of humor treatment prior to an educational dissection of fish may also lead to a lower anxiety and lower disgust. We used humorous video clips before the dissection and compared them with a control video of the life history of the fish (trout). A total of 49 University students received the treatment with the humor video clips and 65 the life-history video. We measured state anxiety and disgust prior to the treatment and after the film treatment. The treatment with humorous video clips reduced anxiety and disgust compared to the control group with the life-history film. Although this study has been carried out in dissection of an animal in teacher students, we believe that these results can be generalized and transferred into other parts of dissection, such as cadaver dissection of humans in medical education.

In recent years, there has been growing pressure but also an increase of possibilities for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to cooperate with schools in the field of global education. However, especially in cases of more continuous forms of cooperation, difficulties in process management are noted and the intended cooperation impacts often seem to lag far behind expectations. This paper uses an empirical case study that evaluated the effects of a three-and-a-half-year NGO-school cooperation on the school-internal implementation of global education to give explanations for the occurrence of such difficulties and suggest ways to support the implementation of global education via NGO-school cooperation. Against this background, the role(s) of NGOs as stakeholders for global education in the school sector will be explored.

A total of 2,338 students at German universities participated in a survey, which investigated media usage patterns of so-called traditional and non-traditional students (Schuetze & Wolter, 2003). The students provided information on the digital devices that they own or have access to, and on their usage of media and e-learning tools and services for their learning. A distinction was made between external, formal and internal, informal tools and services. Based on the students' responses, a typology of media usage patterns was established by means of a latent class analysis (LCA). Four types or profiles of media usage patterns were identified. These types were labeled entertainment users, peripheral users, advanced users and instrumental users. Among non-traditional students, the proportion of instrumental users was rather high. Based on the usage patterns of traditional and non-traditional students, implications for media selection in the instructional design process are outlined in the paper.

The authors elaborate on the role of playfulness as a preferred characteristic in potential long-term partners recently espoused by Garry Chick and others. They aim to replicate the findings of such research by studying a different culture (that of German-speaking countries) and to develop them further by taking into account the participants' relationship status and individual differences in their playfulness. A sample of 327 students completed a rating scale for desired characteristics in potential partners and a questionnaire for playfulness as a personality trait. Their findings do indeed lend support to the notion that being playful is a desirable trait of potential long-term mates.

The relevance of environmental attitudes is obvious and attitudes towards farm and companion animals and animal welfare in medical research are an important aspect of education. However, both have rarely been linked with each other, and animal attitudes are only sparsely represented within environmental education assessment instruments. Linking these two aspects was the main aim of the present study. The Animal Attitude Scale (AAS), the Intermediate Attitude Scale (IAS), and environmental attitudes based on the 2-MEV-model were used. The 2-MEV model is made of two distinct aspects: preservation and utilization of nature. This relationship between pro-animal attitudes and preservation and utilization has been assessed while controlling for pet ownership, meat consumption, gender and grade level. These covariates are necessary because they have been identified in previous research. Five hundred and forty-three pupils from two different schools in Leipzig, Germany participated in this study. There was a significant influence of gender and grade but not of pet ownership on environmental attitudes. Girls showed higher positive attitudes, and preservation decreased with an increasing grade. Animal attitudes (both AAS and IAS) correlated with > 0.4 with the two environmental attitudes preservation and utilization. It is therefore concluded that environmental attitudes and animal attitudes are closely related constructs.

While there is increasing world-wide discussion of the importance of renewable biological resources and a bio-based economy, science educators around the world have become aware of a declining general interest in plants and agriculture and of little knowledge of plants among the public. Recently, there have been few systematic investigations on the knowledge of crops. To address this observation, we initiated a questionnaire survey with secondary school students based on the assumption that students should acquire a fundamental knowledge of agriculture and crop-plant biology during compulsory education. As home is a source of information, parents were also questioned. On the whole, 926 German secondary school students aged nine to 18 years and 314 parents participated in our questionnaire survey. The data suggest an unsatisfactory level of knowledge about crop plants among students. Girls have greater knowledge and claim to be interested in crops more often than do boys. While knowledge of species was independent of grade and age, knowledge of crop use did increase with increased years of schooling. Parents showed an overall better performance than the students' on items involving plant recognition and their use.

In terms of sustainability, renewable resources, nourishment and healthy diet, crops are important to the public. Thus, knowledge of crops is needed in order to enable people to participate in public discussions and take responsibility. This is in contrast to former surveys showing that students' knowledge of and interest in plants in general, crop plants and agricultural issues is moderate to little. At the same time, approaches to improving knowledge and interest in school are missing. We initiated and established the Greenhouse Project (GHP) where secondary school students (grades 5-13) get to know crops through cultivating from seed to seed. To investigate whether or not original contact with a variety of staple crops and hands-on activities positively affect students' knowledge, students of two German secondary schools were asked via questionnaires before and after the treatment. Our study was conducted in the cities of Mainz and Wiesbaden which are situated in the German Federal states of Rhineland-Palatinate and Hesse, respectively. In total, 74 students in 6/7th and 11/12th grades took part in this pretest-posttest survey; three additional 6/7th and 11/12th grade classes (i.e. 48 students) were used as control classes, and had no contact with the GHP during this time. We demonstrated that the treatment has positive effects on students' knowledge, and that girls performed better than did boys. Therefore, knowledge of crop plant species, as well as morphological knowledge, improved. A higher level of knowledge cannot only be observed objectively via test scores, but also subjectively via the students' self-assessment of knowledge. In contrast, the students' opinions about and attitudes towards agriculture and crops decreased in the posttest, both in the treatment and control classes.

Political competencies are often considered a precondition for political action; however, they are not independent of previous political participation, which may also include the frequency and the kind of political media consumption. My research aims at finding out the importance of participation in political activities in the past, as well as taking over civic responsibility in positions at school or university for cognitive political competencies. The focus is on structural political knowledge of the polity, symbolic political knowledge about political figures and actors, and political reasoning. The main hypothesis reads that the media primarily influence symbolic political knowledge, while structural political knowledge is mainly achieved by active political participation. The ability of political reasoning is assumed to be equally influenced by both, media consumption and political participation. By using a small, homogeneous sample of university students, these hypotheses are examined by taking into consideration socio-demographic control variables and political interest in statistical analyses and by considering differential effects of various political activities and different forms of political media consumption. The results are primarily discussed with respect to potential future research and by considering political education in modern societies.

This study explores the criteria that are important for graduate students in selecting a university in Germany; how these criteria match up with students' views of the institution they ultimately attended; and how graduate students gained information about the colleges/universities they considered. This study reveals that public university graduate students in Germany consider a wide variety of criteria when deciding on which colleges/universities to apply; and that their actual behavior in terms of enrollment may not directly reflect the importance they state they give to certain selection criteria. A bibliography is included.

Changes in achievement motivation over the first semester of university studies were examined with N = 229 freshmen, who were surveyed twice in the present study. Students' academic self-concepts, achievement goals, and subjective values were chosen as theoretically central components of achievement motivation. The results indicated significant deterioration in achievement motivation over the course of the first semester of university studies, a phenomenon which affected a large proportion of the first-year students. Regression analyses provided evidence that motivation, prior to the start of university studies, and the changes in motivation had incremental validity over measures of prior school-achievement in predicting self-regulated learning, performance in examinations, as well as the intention to change university majors or drop out completely (partially in interaction with prior school-achievement).

The Student Background survey administered along with achievement tests in studies of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement includes scales of student motivation, competence, and attitudes toward mathematics and science. The scales consist of positively- and negatively keyed items. The current research examined the factorial structure of the 18-item motivational scales in fourth-grade mathematics in the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Survey data from six European countries were analyzed. In comparisons of alternative models, the fit was adequate when three correlated factors were specified and negative keying was taken into account as a latent factor, or with correlated uniquenesses among negatively keyed items. Participants reading achievement scores correlated systematically to negative keying with coefficients ranging from 0.254 to 0.395 in the six samples. Unlike their higher-scoring peers, fourth-graders with lower reading achievement responded differentially to similar items depending on the direction of item keying, in such a way that their motivation scores were biased downward. Implications about the use of reverse keying in surveys for young students are discussed.

Industrialized nations have invested a great deal of public and private resources to facilitate access to information technologies (ITs) and to adjust their cultures and societies to them. These efforts are commonly associated with the idea of expanding computer literacy from higher education institutions to business organizations. Computers have fundamentally altered how we live and work, as well as how we learn and have transformed the world into a global community. Moreover, business organizations have struggled to train and to turn their workforce into a computer literate group that keeps a breast of changes in computing and information technologies, since most of the work does not rely on standardized literacy levels to perform well. This paper presents an examination on current computer literacy skills between groups of adult students enrolled in accelerated undergraduate business programs in the USA and in Germany. Special emphasis is granted to the discussion of the similarities and differences found in computer literacy skills and the implications associated with having literate and illiterate groups in the workplace.

Despite a great deal of research on the benefits of writing in mathematics, writing plays a minimal role, if any, in secondary and tertiary mathematics education. In order for teachers to use writing in their classrooms, they themselves have to experience writing mathematics within the teacher education programme. The present paper reports on a study aimed at addressing this gap. In a problem-solving seminar, preservice teachers had an opportunity to experience writing in mathematics and report how this affected their problem-solving processes and shaped their attitudes towards incorporating writing in their classrooms. In order to provide a more detailed description of the phenomenon, four participants were chosen based on their beliefs about mathematics. All of the participants struggled with writing their explanations. Those who used writing as a method to support metacognitive processes while exploring mathematics tended to respond positively to the writing process. The others used writing merely as a method to produce a formal document to be evaluated by the instructor. Consequently, those who viewed writing and doing mathematics as an intertwined process expressed a positive attitude towards using writing in their mathematics classroom. This was, unfortunately, not the case when writing and doing mathematics were seen as two separate processes. Implications for teacher education programmes are presented at the end of the report.

Little is known about differences in the impact of economic stress on students as compared to persons holding secure job positions. Besides the macroeconomic effects, an economic downturn can also affect individual's physical health and psychological well-being (Aytaç & Rankin, 2009). Prior research showed that socio-demographic characteristics and conditions (e.g. age, gender, job status, or education) are associated with people's mental health (Hobfoll, 1998). The present study addressed two general questions: how people perceive their financial situation and their employability in the time following a financial crisis and whether or not these crisis-based appraisals of their economic standing have influence on their mental health. Of particular interest to this study was to explore these issues across occupational status (college students versus employees) and gender.

In Europe, there is a growing interest in honors education, not only in the bachelor's but also in the master's degree. The Dutch government, for instance, is actively promoting excellence in both bachelor's and master's degrees through honors programs (Siriusteam). Most Dutch universities have honors programs at the bachelor's level or are developing them. Some universities have also recently introduced honors into their master's programs, stimulated by recent publications (van Eijl, Wolfensberger & Pilot). Because honors master's programs are a new phenomenon in higher education and are still exceptional in the United States of America, the authors have undertaken a research project to study them (van Ginkel & van Eijl). For this exploratory project, a mixed method approach was used (Creswell & Plano-Clark; van Ginkel & van Eijl) in a study that was carried out at the start of the academic year 2009-2010. First, an Internet search identified Dutch and non-Dutch honors master's programs. Second, a literature review facilitated a comparison between Dutch honors master's programs and Dutch honors bachelor's programs. Third, staff members provided insights into the honors master's within the discipline of law at the University of Utrecht. Interviews with teachers revealed specific information about a representative example of Dutch honors master's courses. Fourth, in line with the interviews, a small quantitative survey yielded an impression of the interest of students in supplemental activities included in the master's stage of their study. Thirty-seven master's students from different disciplines completed the survey. The study revealed the existence of different kinds of honors master's programs not only in The Netherlands but also in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, and Ireland. These honors master's programs are found in the humanities, social sciences, hard sciences, and professional schools. The programs are diverse with respect to content, focus, and scheduling, and they are, as far as the authors could trace, very new. It is concluded that the emergence of honors master's programs shows a new focus on promoting excellence in university teaching and learning not only among undergraduates but now also at the master's level.

This paper reports on the design and evaluation of a UK University's global eLearning MBA programme. The aims of the research were to investigate the learning experiences of the students on the course and to evaluate the effectiveness of the support system so as to improve the programme. The primary research method was a longitudinal semi-structured questionnaire survey, and data were collected from students taking the course during the years 2008-2010. Three rounds of survey were conducted, resulting in 149 valid responses. The first round showed a fairly high level of student satisfaction with the programme, but also indicated areas that needed further improvement. The impacts of subsequent changes in the programme and the learning support system were investigated in the second and third rounds of the survey. Feedback from these has helped develop additional changes in the learning content and delivery approach of the programme. Overall, the findings helped improve the course's delivery approach, enriched the course's content, enhanced its quality, and improved the satisfaction level of the students. It is hoped that these findings can provide useful insights to course managers and eLearning developers of other courses offered in a global context. (Contains 2 figures and 3 tables.)

In recent years, ethics has drawn increased interest from information technology and computer science practitioners as well as from academicians. This article investigates the issues outlined in the PAPA framework in today's environment and explores the possibility that new issues have emerged. Findings indicate that the ethicality of property misuse may be viewed differently based on the level of personal risk, thereby offering a refinement of the original PAPA property issue.

The study aimed to assess and compare the values prevalent among the students and teachers of Universities in Bangladesh, Japan, USA and Germany. The sample consisted of 480 students and 236 teachers. The sample included 120 undergraduate students from Japan; 120 undergraduate students from Bangladesh; 120 undergraduate students from USA, and 120 undergraduate students from Germany. The faculty sample included 60 teachers from Japan, 60 teachers from Bangladesh; 60 teachers from USA, and 56 teachers from Germany. To identify the value preferences of the individuals a list of 10 values, pro-social, achievement, power over others, security, self direction, otherworldliness, fatalism, narcissism, inner directed, and conservative, based on previous values studies by Singh and Parek were prepared. The first five values were identified in previous studies as functional (Singh, 1975) and other five were identified as dysfunctional (Parek, 1988) in the context of national development of Asian cultures. The results revealed that Bangladeshi students held stronger preferences for values identified as functional values than for those identified as dysfunctional. Japanese students indicated stronger preferences for the values identified as functional values except narcissism. The American students indicated a preference for three of the five values identified as functional but also ranked narcissism and other worldliness as third and fifth preferred values respectively. German student showed a preference for functional values, except narcissism which they also ranked as third. Bangladeshi teachers' preferences for functional values were higher than dysfunctional values. Japanese teachers indicated a preference for functional values except narcissism. American teachers preferred functional values except other worldliness. German teachers' value preferences were also functional, except for narcissism which they ranked as fifth. Students and teachers in the four countries sampled indicate preferences for values identified as functional with few exceptions. This research suggests that value preferences among university students and teachers are more similar than different, suggesting a homogenizing effect (Boli, 2005) on human values. An English version of schedule for value preferences is appended. (Contains 4 tables)

Turkey's candidacy for accession to the European Union (EU) dates back to many years and is still a current and highly disputed issue. This study was conducted to determine the opinions of students at Turkish and German universities on Turkey in relation to the European Union. Two hundred twenty six German students participated in the study from the departments of Turkish Translation and Interpretation and Asian Languages at the University of Bonn, Germany, and 270 Turkish students participated in the study from Ataturk Faculty of Education in Marmara University, Istanbul-Turkey. The research data were collected through a questionnaire created by Dartan, Nas, Akman, and Savran (2004). The questionnaire was prepared in both Turkish and German languages and consisted of 27 items. Five items of the questionnaire aimed at the collection of personal data and 17 items are responded with "yes, no, uncertain, no idea." These items were categorized under four dimensions consisting of "Turkey's general structure, Turkey's economic and political situation, Turkey's foreign policy, and general opinions on Turkey's accession to the EU." The other 5 items consisted of multiple or one choice questions, which investigated students' approach to the EU from different perspectives. According to the findings, responses given by two groups of students have been interpreted comparatively. According to the results of the study, Turkish students specified health issues, economic and political instabilities, and debates over secularism as the fundamental problems in accession of Turkey to the EU. Turkish students believe that Turkey's accession to the EU is a very long process and perhaps a process that would never end. German students had a more positive approach to Turkey's accession to the EU. However, students in Germany highlighted religion, population, and economic factors as the most important obstacles to the accession of Turkey to the EU. Furthermore, contrary to Turkish students, students in Germany believe that Turkey is ready to join the EU. Both groups confirm that Turkey is a secular and democratic country and that it provides a model for the other Islamic countries.

Although literature provides strong evidence for the beneficial role of outgroup contact, longitudinal knowledge regarding the formation and change of outgroup contact remains improvable. Using a longitudinal, large-scale data set including 6,726 majority and minority participants (M[subscript age] = 14.98 years at Wave 1; 55% female) from 4 western European countries that were followed in 3 waves over 2 years, we systematically examined the development of outgroup contact during adolescence and tested the role of hypothesized predictors (i.e., intergroup attitudes and social identity) for explaining this development. In the majority, growth curve models revealed consistent patterns of ethnic homophily characterized by a continuous decline of outgroup contact, whereas this negative growth was buffered by a positive change of intergroup attitudes and a negative change of national identity during adolescence. In contrast, in the minority, outgroup contact was characterized by higher mean levels and a nonlinear development (i.e., no systematic decline or increase) of outgroup contact. Findings highlight the developmental importance of adolescence for promoting positive intergroup relations, especially for the majority, and emphasize the usefulness of contact interventions with adolescent students in school.

Contrary to the opinion that formative and summative assessment approaches are not compatible, this article presents a theoretically grounded way in which different forms of assessment can be combined and integrated in university mathematics teacher education. Two mixed-assessment approaches are demonstrated through the analysis of a case study involving a practice-based seminar accompanying a school internship. First, a formative eportfolio assessment was combined with a summative panel survey to assess the learning opportunities of mathematics pre-service teachers. Second, the formative eportfolio approach was integrated with a summative oral course examination to make statements about the learning processes and learning outcomes of the pre-service teachers. Our analyses conclude that combining and integrating the two forms of assessment present the possibility of evaluating different aspects of the pre-service teachers' perceptions of opportunities to learn. Benefits, validation aspects and limitations of the two approaches of combining and integrating assessment forms are discussed.