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Noncontiguous school attendance zone boundaries (AZBs) have a unique, relatively uncommon shape that assign two or more non-adjacent residential areas to the same school. Given their ability to shape school enrollments by taking advantage of residential sorting, noncontiguous AZBs have historically been linked to explicit efforts to both segregate and desegregate schools. In this paper, we use a novel, longitudinal dataset of AZBs and descriptive quantitative and geospatial methods to understand how the relationship between noncontiguous zones, school diversity, and neighborhood demographics changed from 1990-2020 in two southwestern school districts--Tucson Unified School District, Arizona and Fort Bend Independent School District, Texas. Each district has a unique legal history and demographic context that informs their use of noncontiguous AZBs. We find noncontiguous AZBs are more strongly associated with racially diverse schools and are more likely to bring together neighborhoods with different compositions in Tucson compared to Fort Bend. However, the association between Tucson's noncontiguous AZBs and racially diverse schools has waned since 1990, as the district has negotiated the end of its court-ordered desegregation plan. Our findings provide insight into when and how noncontiguous AZBs can effectively contribute to ethnoracially diverse schools.

School heads or principals have various roles in developing school quality, which can often be stressful. In this study we investigated principals' perceptions of quality schools, the practices performed to improve quality, and the stress and support factors involved. We adopted a qualitative inductive content analysis approach to analyse the transcribed data collected from 14 principals of senior high schools in the Volta region of Ghana. The findings show that principals perceive quality schools as having high academic performance, quality teachers, and adequate resources coordinated in a well-organised system. Furthermore, the results reveal practices that principals perform to improve school quality, such as promoting staff professional development, supporting students' intellectual and skills development, supervising teachers, and providing resources. On the other hand, supervision, non-cooperation of some teachers, inadequate resources, and administrative bureaucracy were revealed as causes of stress in improving school quality. Facing these challenges, the principals relied on their academic qualifications and experiences when engaging in practices to improve school quality. We recommend further research on the possibility of principals using technology to monitor the presence of teachers in classrooms from their offices.

Organizational culture acts as the mortar that connects the bricks. Every institution has its own unique culture which has been adopted and shared by all employees over the years. As establishment stories, ways of doing business, and communication styles change, culture also adopts itself to these in a way that is specific to that organization. Since there is no single understanding of culture covering all types of institutions, research has focused on classifying the concept of organizational culture according to types and concentrated on situational studies. As in for-profit businesses, culture is also significant in organizations that prioritize social goals. In this research, an academic organization within the realm of public institutions is discussed. The purpose of the article is to reveal the functioning of the elements that make up the organizational culture of the Open Education Faculty in the institution and the types of culture that are seen as dominant in the organization. In the case study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the managers who have taken important roles in the history of the institution, and the documents containing information about the faculty culture were analyzed. The results of the qualitative content analysis revealed that Anadolu University Open Education Faculty has a strong and established culture, and this contributes to the work done and institutional development. Considering the dominant cultural styles in the institution; it is noteworthy that it started as an effective, collaborative, dynamic and work-based culture. With the institutional growth being experienced over time, the faculty culture has evolved towards a more protective, bureaucratic, and analytical one due to the difficulties in the organizational environment and the risks in the decisions taken. However, considering the scope, structural features, and stakeholder diversity of open education at home and abroad, the faculty still maintains a dynamic, collaborative and developmental cultural style with its ability to coordinate between units, its flexibility to respond to environmental changes, and its efforts to take innovative steps.

Students attracted to quantitative disciplines of study can be reluctant to devote much attention to the critical task of communicating, and previous research (Hostager, 2018) has identified statistically significant differences in learning approaches by major among undergraduate business students. This paper presents results of learning assurance for writing skills (direct measures) even when the course content relates to the highly quantitative topics of data analytics and finance. The approach combines various pedagogical methods in an undergraduate, writing-intensive setting: traditional testing in an iterative framework, "flipped classroom" intensive work using spreadsheet software, repeated submission of brief papers incorporating analytical finance work, and student research presentations (including at an undergraduate research conference). We present quantitative and qualitative data demonstrating assurance of learning for evaluation purposes, including the recently announced (2020) competency-based Assurance of Learning standards from the Association for the Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). To assess the robustness of our findings, we also report results using alternate learning resources (old and new) and delivery methods (in-person, hybrid, fully online), taking advantage of the pandemic natural experiment. We found that learning progress was assured in each context for hybrid and fully online delivery; however, learning was not as monotonic as for fully in-person implementation.

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between school structure, distributed leadership and accountability of school administrators. Relational survey design was adopted in the study. 444 elementary school teachers working in Aziziye, Palandöken and Yakutiye in Erzurum participated in the study. In sample selection, stratified sampling method was used. In data collection, the Enabling School Structure Scale, the Distributed Leadership Scale and the Accountability Behavior Scale for School Administrators were used. The data were analyzed using SPSS 23.0 for preliminary statistical analyses, LISREL 8.80 for Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), and the PROCESS macro for SPSS v3.3 for mediation analyses. In data analysis, Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Analysis, Bootstrap Analysis, and SEM were used. Furthermore, a mediation analysis was conducted to investigate whether distributed leadership played a mediating role in the relationship between school structure and accountability. The results revealed that coercive bureaucracy had a negative effect on accountability and distributed leadership while enabling bureaucracy had a positive effect on accountability and distributed leadership. Furthermore, the analysis revealed a positive effect of distributed leadership on accountability. This study revealed the mediating role of distributed leadership in the effect of coercive and enabling bureaucracy on accountability. In other words, it was found that the coercive and enabling bureaucracy had direct and indirect effects on accountability. Finally, a number of recommendations were made to educators, policy makers and researchers based on these findings.

Scholars deem university partnerships with public schools as an innovative opportunity to marry research and practice. In part because they can support developing and implementing evidence-based interventions that improve school culture, academics, and community participation. However, what is less discussed are the barriers and challenges of bringing two vastly different organizations, such as a university and public school together for partnership. Practitioners and scholars document even less about how street-level bureaucrats, those delivering programs within and across complex organizations that make up the partnership, see, experience, and navigate the barriers. The Heinz Fellows were on the ground in public schools, on behalf of the university, navigating those barriers and challenges that were a blend of unforeseen circumstances, unaccounted-for realities, and underestimation of systems "as usual." As noted by Ahmed (2012), school systems, like other institutions, become an accumulation of historical activity. Street Level Bureaucracy theory (Weatherley & Lipsky, 1977) examines how frontline workers, such as Heinz Fellows, traverse between and betwixt complex environments with little direct supervision and employ discretion and coping to accomplish program goals. Alas, hindsight is twenty-twenty. From a post-partnership lens, productive tensions, uncomfortable conversations, and a clearer path forward are advanced to navigate the tensions of university/public school partnerships. A clearer path forward must begin with a pre-partnership assessment of each organization's strengths, limitations, and resources.

This study involved 51 Chinese universities from the Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Ranking 2021. With based the resource-based view (RBV) as a framework, it aimed to identify the determinants of human resource capital that were related to universities' production of MOOCs. Three determinants were detected--size, lifelong learning, and proximity to the political centre. Both size and proximity to the political centre proved to be significant. The findings provide timely implications for university managers and suggest that the variety of management spaces be expanded to increase the portfolio of high-quality Chinese universities that facilitate the production of MOOCs. In addition, universities should increase their proximity awareness to remedy the disadvantages of uneven resource allocation due to geographical proximity.

This study analyses the communicative competencies of civil servants in Kazakhstan, highlighting the crucial role of effective communication in fostering public trust and enhancing democratic engagement. Utilizing qualitative focus group discussions with 32 experts, the research identified key deficiencies, including reliance on bureaucratic language, a lack of empathy, and inadequate crisis communication skills. These issues underscore the pressing need for communication strategies tailored to the Kazakhstani context. The study points to the necessity of developing Kazakhstan-specific communication frameworks and emphasizes the importance of improving training programs and promoting emotional intelligence among civil servants. By enhancing internal communication processes and clarifying responsibilities, government employees can better serve the public, fostering a more transparent, responsive, and participatory government. This research offers a valuable foundation for future initiatives aimed at refining the communicative competencies of civil servants in Kazakhstan, suggesting pathways for implementing targeted improvements and developing more effective communication practices within the public sector. Through these efforts, the study aims to contribute to the creation of a government that not only addresses public needs more efficiently but also actively engages citizens in the democratic process, ultimately strengthening the relationship between the state and its people.

This systematic review identifies the barriers to implementing restorative justice programs in public school organizations. Due to the novelty of restorative justice in schools, barriers often hamper the implementation process. Thus, it was necessary to identify barriers and how they can be mitigated. The PRISMA tool was utilized to examine 17 studies. The review harnessed Lipsky's (1980) street-level bureaucracy framework to understand the roles of street-level bureaucrats in the education bureaucracy and to understand how the barriers align with the variables that comprise the framework. The results indicated that several barriers existed which include resources, bureaucratic discretion, and role ambiguity.

Pedagogical renewal is a concept loaded with a historical-pedagogical trajectory linked to reflection, social justice, educational improvement, teacher commitment and the questioning of the educational model, with personalised education being a key aspect. The aim of this paper is to analyse how learning is personalised in primary education centres that promote processes of pedagogical renewal. A qualitative methodology is used, based on a case study. Two schools with a high intensity of pedagogical renewal were selected and in-depth interviews were conducted with the management team and teachers, focus groups with families and students, and participant observation. The information derived is analysed with the ATLAS.Ti 22 programme, after coding and categorisation. The results reveal a number of common elements and processes of personalisation of learning which are structured in three dimensions. In the first dimension, school characteristics, the following stand out: student autonomy, individualisation of learning and freedom of choice of learning pathways. As for the second dimension, educational project, the following elements stand out: flexible curricular organisation, active methodology where group work is a key element, organisation of timetables without previously established patterns, the role of accompanying teachers, student focus and active participation of families in daily school life. Finally, from the third dimension, inclusion, the following can be extracted: daily educational work where diversity is not a limitation, but a source of learning of great didactic value.

In this article we share our learning experiences on the organizational design barriers we perceived to have encountered with scenario planning in higher education for program development. Our perceived barriers discussed include misalignment of culture and change intervention; constructing organizational reality and meaning making; knowledge creation and transfer of knowledge; and short term versus long term outcomes. Our retrospective analysis contributes to the understanding of the complexity of change in higher education and adds to the knowledge base on using scenario planning in a bureaucratic, hierarchical context. Our experiences are incongruent with implicit assumptions that scenario planning can be used in any context (Balarezo et al., 2017), and illustrate some important constraints to consider before using this type of forward-thinking intervention. We provide recommendations for using scenario planning and for transformational change in higher education. These changes have implications for more creative, future-oriented educational planning processes for improving higher education teaching and learning experiences.

Online programs have made a lasting impact on institutions of higher learning for several decades. This ethnographic qualitative study focused on the development and support of a distance learning department at a Hispanic-serving institution. The study aimed to identify unique organizational elements specific to this Hispanic-serving institution. The findings were significant, revealing that the Distance Learning department, operating under an "academic umbrella", functioned as a comprehensive hub for both faculty and student support, offering a wide range of services including technical and instructional technology support. Furthermore, the study found that the department's placement under the "academic umbrella" not only centralized support but also lightened professors' coursework loads by assisting students with instructional technology support.

Recent advances in educational neuroscience research underscore the need for a comprehensive analysis of articles in this field; such scrutiny can elucidate the practical implications of neuroscience findings in education and illuminate future research directions. The purpose of this study was to conduct a descriptive content analysis of articles published in the field of educational neuroscience. The data collected through the Educational Neuroscience Articles Classification Form were analyzed via content analysis. The diversity of research in the field of educational neuroscience and the growth in the number of studies in recent years demonstrate that this discipline represents a comprehensive and potentially effective field. In addition, developing concrete suggestions for practice strengthens the integration of educational neuroscience into educational practices. Furthermore, future research needs to focus more on converting theoretical knowledge into practical applications and assessing the impact of these applications. Moreover, increasing interdisciplinary cooperations is crucial for educational neuroscience to realize its full potential. Finally, further studies conducted through mixed methods and qualitative research methods provide a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of educational neuroscience. On the other hand, the following recommendations have been made based on these insights: applied research studies can be conducted to directly integrate neuroscientific findings into educational practices. In addition, cooperation among educational scientists, neuroscientists, and researchers in the field of psychology can make the integration of neuroscientific findings into educational practices more efficient. Last but not least, research conducted through qualitative and mixed methods provides a more comprehensive and in-depth understanding of educational neuroscience.

Drawing on perspectives from top state-regional universities' authorities (known as "rectors") and public statistics on higher education, we discuss the sources of regional inequality in the Chilean university system. While there is scarce research on regional inequality for Chilean higher education, it is a well-recognized concern within global debates. In this study, the testimonies of rectors link perceptions of regional inequality to the historic, political, and managerial dimensions that have determined their institutions' development. As the problem of regional inequality stems from a tradition of political centralization, the neoliberal transformations, imposed since 1981, were singled out by the rectors for institutionalizing patterns of marketization that reinforced "inequalities of origin" for state-regional universities. Since the 2000s, trends of massification, regulation, and student protests reshaped higher education, leading to sectorial reform in 2018. However, competitive disadvantages are seen to continue to hinder the public role of state-regional universities. Institutional development strategies emerged, under the direction of rectors, to compensate for such inequalities, differentiating between winners and losers of neoliberal higher education. This article characterizes the modes of reproduction and overcoming of regional inequalities among state universities under neoliberal policy.

An alternative to insert history of science (HS) in teacher formation programs is the use of concept maps (CM), which may be very useful to represent the historical elaboration dimension of science concepts, laws, and principles. This paper presents the results of a study that identifies the conceptions of pre-service physics teachers about the relationships between CM hierarchical organization and knowledge elaboration in HS. In the first stage of the research, the content analysis methodology was used to analyze and categorize the students' answers to questions concerning the relationships between CM hierarchical organization and HS. In the second stage, the answers of a different group of pre-service teachers were analyzed concerning the level of agreement with the categories previously elaborated. The students associated CM hierarchical organization with knowledge improvement, elucidation of the importance level of the concepts, and the relationships between more general and more specific contents. We point out that the use of CM in HS subjects may contribute to the pre-service teachers associating HS concepts not in a chronological way, but in hierarchical order, from the most general to the most specific ones.

The purpose of this study is to review the literature on the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) for the past 10 years to identify multiple paths through which school leadership exerted influences on school organizations and organizational outcomes. Our analysis of a network, consisting of 83 nodes (variables) and 242 variable ties from 29 reviewed studies identified four emergent themes. Reviewed studies (1) overwhelmingly framed the principal as the driver and teachers as the target of change; (2) suggested nine core variables (e.g., instructional leadership) to play central roles within the reviewed studies; (3) depicted student academic achievement as a function of the principal's instructional leadership and their job satisfaction influenced by school context, principal qualification, and organizational conditions (e.g., respect for others); and (4) suggested teacher self-efficacy as the potential bridging variable between multiple change processes. The discussion includes implications for school leadership and future research.

The construction of an organization aims to enhance the performance and versatility of the organization for society. Consequently, as a platform for training human resources, universities have to develop constantly, following the community's insistence. In 2022, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology specified there are 21 state universities with legal entities. The status of a state university with a legal entity presents extensive autonomy in the field of academic, asset, and financial management. Besides, the universities also carry an obligation for university management to develop their institution, which is in accordance with Formal Model of Educational Management by Bush (2011). This model implies that organizations have a hierarchical structure and that predefined goals are pursued using a reasonable way. This study aims to identify the dominant variables for the state university with legal entity development. The method that used in this study is literature review by Tranfield, Denyer, & Smart (2003) with a case analysis involving a number of universities. The analysis results found that the dominant variables in the universities' development included the organization structure, working mechanism or organizational guidelines, the organizational climate and culture, along with the use of technology devices.

This study investigated the noticing of teachers who teach mathematics at different grade levels in the context of lesson study. The study specifically focused on teachers' noticing during the planning phase of the lesson. For this, the lesson planning phase of a group of four teachers consisting of kindergarten and primary school 1st grade teachers (vertical teacher team) was investigated. Teachers' planning process for the 1st grade level mathematics lesson was the focus in the context of lesson study. We examined categories and subcategories that emerged in the planning phase of the lesson study and noticing levels dealt with those categories. We examined which categories and subcategories emerged in planning and at which noticing levels they dealt with those categories. The results of the study provide comprehensive data on categories and noticing levels of teachers teaching mathematics at different grade levels in the collaborative planning process of a lesson study focusing on improving problem-solving. The results of the study showed that the teachers' noticing was clustered under three categories: curriculum, teaching methods, and conceptual understanding. In terms of noticing levels, the study's results revealed that noticing is performed at the attending to level in all categories. Although less frequently than the attending to level, teachers noticed making sense of level in all the other categories except the curriculum category. Besides, noticing that the deciding to respond level did not occur at any level might be due to the cultural challenges of adaptation of lesson study and the amount of support, we researchers provided teachers as facilitators.

Where should academic advising be housed within a college or university organizational structure? To assure that the academic is emphasized in academic advising, the most logical and appropriate location is within the academic structure of the institution, which means being placed as close as possible to the faculty and the curriculum. This approach allows academic advisors to engage in teaching, research, and community service just as their faculty colleagues do. Having academic advisors teach (in their offices and in classrooms), engage in research advancing the literature of academic advising, work with faculty to enhance curriculum when necessary, and develop policies and procedures that might enhance student success will move forward the professionalization of the field.

The prediction of physical ability is a key point to understand the physical training effect of college students. This paper uses the error Back Propagation neural network algorithms to investigate the college students' physical test results, and predicts the future trends of the results. The findings indicate that, in future ten years, the physical test grades of both men and women will slip to a certain extent. It implies that the indicators of speed, power, endurance level and physical strength of college students keep going down. This phenomenon should be paid attention to. It is necessary to strength the exercise consciousness, and stimulates the enthusiasm of students' exercise.

This article examines the power dynamics underpinning performance management at a selected South African university. It specifically employs Michel Foucault's (1977) ideas on Governmentality to interpret the envisioning of performance management in this context at the level of Policy. The study employed a qualitative research methodology to address the questions at hand. Data were generated from one primary source: a discourse analysis of the Performance Management Policy (2013) at a selected university in South Africa. Using Michel Foucault's (1991) theories on governmentality, a discourse analysis of Performance Management Policy documents was conducted with the goal of critically interrogating the kinds of new academic subjectivities being created in South African higher education. The findings show that the Policy on Performance Management at the university in question works towards creating academic subjects which conform with the university's expectations and are consistently self- regulated. Findings also show that management of academics is constantly controlled and regulated by a powerful matrix of governance, comprising the university and the wider global community. This paper recommends that performance management discourses should take into stronger cognizance the matter of academic freedom and autonomy. We further recommend that Policy developers and management teams at universities be conscious of the complex forces of power that shape academic identities so that their policies move away from oppressive discourses. We argue that there is much we can learn from governmentality theory if we hope to build more just and equitable societies going forward.

In this essay I concentrate on a distinct aspect of teaching courses online postpandemic: concrete steps both to ease workload burden and to increase student learning efficacy. There are ten lessons that can facilitate moving instruction online: 1. Organize the Course in Weekly Modules; 2. Communicate on a Regular Schedule; 3. Post Key Lectures; 4. Implement Discussions; 5. Provide Frequent Feedback; 6. Solicit Student Feedback; 7. Reconsider Deadlines; 8. Use Online Assessments; 9. Experiment and Learn from Others; and 10. Proactively Seek Administrative Support. I applied these lessons to a specific course: Public Speaking. Traditionally based on face-to-face presentations, the ability to move this course online bodes well for adapting all instruction to the requirements of online learning.

The objectives of this study were to study (i) the excellence in quality management of basic schools in the Nonthaburi Provincial Administrative Organization, (ii) the innovative organization of basic schools at the Nonthaburi Provincial Administrative Organization, and (iii) the excellence in quality management affecting the innovative organization of primary schools under the Nonthaburi Provincial Administrative Organization. The study involved 240 participants, encompassing administrators, heads of learning groups, and teachers. The research instrument utilized was a questionnaire, and statistical analyses such as frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and stepwise multiple regression analysis were employed to analyze the collected data. Findings reveal significant insights: The study highlights a high level of practice in excellent quality management in basic schools, ranking in descending order as follows: student and stakeholder focus, performance results, strategic planning, faculty, and staff focus, measurement, analysis and knowledge management, process management, and leadership. The innovative organization of basic schools encourages high-level ranking in descending order: key individual, appropriate organizational structure, creative raising climate, effective teamwork, long-term stability, boundary spanning and learning exchange, highinvolvement innovation, shared vision, and intention to create innovation. The study excellence quality management five variables: performance results, leadership strategic planning, process management staff focus that affected the innovation organization of primary schools under the Nonthaburi Provincial Administrative Organization, totaling 84.70 percent, written as a regression analysis equation as follows [lambda]Y[subscript tot]= 0.080 + 0.269X7 +0.091X[subscript 1] + 0.231X[subscript 6] + 0.164X[subscript 2] + 0.133X[subscript 5].

The didactic class is a pedagogical tool meant to increase classroom interactivity by encouraging student discussion of real-life cases in connection with theory. This paper evaluates the pedagogical impact of using a one-off didactic class where an external expert is brought in to discuss how to relate a cognitive psychology course's content to real-life problems. Using a mixed-methods approach, we measure the undergraduate students' sense of conceptual understanding, their perspective on applying cognitive sciences, their sense of belonging to the department, and their motivation to work. Students' sense of understanding and their perspective in applying cognitive sciences to real-world problems significantly increased after this class. However, we found no significant differences in their sense of belonging to the department or their motivation to study. This suggests didactic classes may further course-specific content but do not change broader aspects of motivation or belonging. The qualitative interviews support the quantitative results. Students reported that the didactic class made them think laterally about content from other modules and how they could apply theoretical insights to real-world problems, which boosted confidence. Students reported great satisfaction with the didactic class. Of course, the speaker must be relevant to the course content, and students should feel empowered and able to speak in class. However, these are practical concerns that should not discourage lecturers from exploring didactic classes as a fun and instructive tool that has significant pedagogical benefits.

Numerous scholars have investigated the determinants of university innovation efficiency. However, the internal governance aspects of universities and their interactions with the external environment are frequently neglected. Therefore, this study, grounded in the framework of embeddedness theory, employed the Stochastic Frontier Analysis method to empirically analyze innovation efficiency in Chinese universities. The results indicated that competitive threats significantly improved university innovation efficiency, whereas bureaucracy and international openness exhibited adverse effects, which were alleviated in regions with greater marketization.

U.S. public schools provide substantially different educational opportunities to students--even within school districts, where attendance zone boundaries (AZBs) shape most children's access to schools. The (re)drawing of AZBs is therefore a highly consequential policy decision. In this paper, I study how AZB changes in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area affect children of different races between 2000 and 2020, including how they alter children's travel times to school and access to school-level educational opportunities. Findings are starkly unequal, with rezoning disproportionately negatively affecting Black and Hispanic children. Results highlight the need for educational leaders to explicitly consider how AZB changes will redistribute opportunity within their districts.

This paper explores the transfer, translation and recontextualisation of Laurence Stenhouse's work, as encapsulated in the 'teacher as researcher' metaphor, to the Greek language and in the fields of research and policy in Greece and Cyprus. We first briefly frame action research work as emerging through and within a specific space-time (and in conversation with others in North America, Australia and Europe). We then trace its translation from English to Greek in specific key publications in books and articles (including his 1975 seminal work "An introduction to curriculum research and development"), which have since been central to curriculum studies as an academic field in both countries. We then construct four vignettes as cases of different uses of the metaphor in different fields. The first two refer to the institutional context of a new type of school called 'second chance schools' and a state policy for the professional development of teachers in Greece. The other two refer to an initial teacher education university programme and to the most recent school curriculum change in the Republic of Cyprus. We conclude by discussing certain patterns of constriction across the four vignettes in the recontextualisation of the 'teacher as researcher' to particular aspects of the metaphor as it morphed in two rather centralised contexts with a strong historical presence of a formal, state-mandated curriculum and of teachers as public servants. Despite these patterns of constriction, we also note how other aspects of the metaphor provided conditions for some transformation.

Using a dataset of higher education institutional alliances within the framework of the European University initiative (EUi), we test empirically whether the policy-defined goal of a relative balance between "excellence and inclusiveness" within the scheme has been achieved. Specifically, we provide a descriptive and analytical account of the diversity of the higher education institutions (HEIs) participating in the EUi, the composition of--as well as the mechanisms behind--the formation of individual alliances. We observe that alliance formation activated the deep sociological mechanisms of hierarchisation, with the alliances largely reproducing the existing "hierarchy of European HEIs." Specifically, we argue that the global-level stratification hierarchy cast by rankings influences the participation of individual institutions and--although to a more limited extent--the formation/structure of the alliances. Further, we demonstrate that the EUi has strengthened existing ties since most alliances thus far have built on existing forms of collaboration. However, we also show empirically that some of the distinctive policy design measures, namely the requirement for broad geographical coverage and generically framed rules for participation, as well as opening the initiative to new alliances and encouraging enlargement of the existing ones, have generated opportunities for involvement of the lower-status institutions. This broadened the scope of the EUi beyond the core of top-ranked research universities located in the knowledge production centres of Europe. We suggest that these observations may have important implications for how the intended extension of the EUi may be implemented in the future.

The global COVID-19 outbreak has disrupted schooling worldwide. Remote and limited face-to-face school management during the pandemic brought to bear the numerous challenges facing schools and principals throughout the crisis, which, in turn, gave rise to changes in their leadership practices and roles. The professional literature needs conceptual and empirical frameworks concerning the challenges facing principals, their role perceptions, and their behaviors when coping with a health crisis such as the coronavirus pandemic. This paper draws on extant literature about school leadership during diverse crisis situations to advise principals facing the current pandemic. Eight guidelines for pandemic leadership are discussed, as well as practical and research implications.

This study exploits a natural experiment to establish the equivalence and/or difference in student learning outcomes between online and face-to-face public and nonprofit administration courses. Its main contribution is thus methodological. We will reexamine the online v. classroom debate - the face-to-face lecture is still the most effective method to deliver course content to students - using a new dataset and estimation approach. Our research addresses this causal inference question: Does the format of course delivery impact student learning? The most robust empirical strategy to rule out alternative explanations in causal studies is the experimental approach. In this study, we did not employ the experimental research design or any standard techniques, for example, regression analysis, available to the program evaluator or policy analyst. Instead, we exploited a naturally occurring phenomenon in a classroom environment to approximate statistical equivalence in the characteristics of students in the online and classroom formats and satisfy the exogeneity assumption of the treatment variable. Its more practical contribution is the use of learning theory and new research in online pedagogy to discuss the study's conclusions and implications for online programming, instruction, and program coordination. We developed the feedback as teaching philosophy or approach to close the gap between the learning outcomes of completely asynchronous online and entirely face-to-face classes in public administration.

Sub-degree education is one of the key higher education sectors in Hong Kong. With the effect of managerialism, tertiary institutions tend to transition from a collegial toward a managerial model, and have shifted from teaching-intensive institutions to research-intensive ones. In this study, two key research questions are addressed: to what degree can managerialism influence organisational change? To what degree and how will an exogenous force generate organisational development? To answer the research questions, we present a case study at "Hong Kong College" via 15 face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with the administrative staff, academic staff, department head, and a visiting scholar. The key research findings identified the difficulties or obstacles experienced in carrying out research or scholarly activities, the long-term impacts on the workplace of staff and sub-degree institutions changing from teaching to research, the advantages of the staff and institutions regarding their working areas in the process of new research directions, and the driving forces for enriching a research culture in sub-degree institutions. Academic and managerial implications are also provided in the paper.

After reading Chris Lowney's (2003) book, Heroic Leadership, with its concept of "twice born" individuals, the author asked himself what it might mean, as a university administrator, to be "twice born." Yet, he was more curious to consider this concept as a framework for shaping, and perhaps even reshaping, the academy itself. He asks, "Can a university be twice born?" Might it be possible for an established institution to "turn inward to re-emerge with a created rather than an inherited sense of identify?" What calls for a college or university in 21st century America to be re-birthed, twice born? Simply, caste. More fully, the legacy of caste in American society generally and the academy specifically, and the resulting hierarchy of privilege and power embedded within.

Given that inhibition interacts with visual temporal processing (VTP), the past evidence regarding the influence of VTP on the Chinese character reading of children with dyslexia may not disclose the whole picture without considering inhibition. Thus, the present study is among the first to investigate VTP and cognitive inhibition as well as their relationships to Chinese character reading. We compared the performances of 62 Chinese-speaking children with dyslexia in primary school (n = 62, M[subscript age] = 11.36 years) on VTP and inhibition tasks to those in a chronological-age-matched group (CA; n = 62, M[subscript age] = 11.57 years) and reading-level-matched group (RL; n = 62, M[subscript age] = 8.98 years). The results revealed that children with dyslexia performed worse than both the CA-matched and RL-matched groups in VTP and inhibition after controlling for age, nonverbal intelligence, and attention. Moreover, the relationship between VTP and Chinese character reading was moderated by inhibition in children with dyslexia. VTP is positively related to Chinese character reading, but this relationship is observed only at higher levels of inhibition. Our results suggest that inhibition plays a potential role in VTP and Chinese character reading, especially for those with dyslexia whose proficiency in inhibition is not as intact as that of typically developing children.

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) offer students opportunities to engage in critical thinking and problem solving. However, quantitating the impact of incorporating research into undergraduate courses on student learning and performance has been difficult since most CUREs lack a comparable traditional course as a control. To determine how course-based research impacts student performance, we compared summative assessments of the traditional format for our upper division immunology course (2013-2016), in which students studied known immune development and responses, to the CURE format (2017-2019), in which students studied the effects of genetic mutations on immune development and responses. Because the overall class structure remained unaltered, we were able to quantitate the impact of incorporating research on student performance. Students in the CURE format class performed significantly better on quizzes, exams, and reports. There were no significant differences in academic levels, degree programs, or grade point averages, suggesting improved performance was due to increased engagement of students in research.

Cohort scheduling intentionally places students in the same sections of several classes (e.g., biology, algebra, and writing) with a consistent peer group and is typically done for small groups (<30 students) to enable better interaction among students. The goal of this study was to compare cohort scheduling to traditional scheduling methods among freshmen in a physiology-related program. Outcomes included retention to the university and major, semester grades, and institutional integration and perceived group cohesion. Incoming freshmen (n = 209) were randomized into control (n = 43; scheduled with traditional methods) and intervention (n = 166; coenrolled in first-year seminar course, biology, and medical terminology) groups. Outcomes were collected via surveys or requested from the university registrar. There was no significant difference in the likelihood of retention to the university or major and no differences between groups in pass/fail rates for the first-year seminar or biology courses. At the end of the semester, there were no differences between groups in Perceived Cohesion for Small Groups (P = 0.102) or the Institutional Integration Scale (P = 0.357). However, the intervention group scored higher on the Institutional Integration Scale's subscales related to social integration and faculty. Cohort scheduling did not impact retention to the university or major but improved secondary outcomes related to retention, specifically social integration and student perceptions of faculty.

In his writing in the mid-nineteenth century -- "The Idea of a University," John Henry Newman argues that the university provides a platform for human advancement through teaching and research. Over a century later, our public university now hedged on several social, political, ecological and economic factors that bully its traditional mission daily. More recently, neoliberalism -- a key feature of globalisation, knowledge economy, environmental crises and other economic logic -- continues to significantly shift universities' missions in another direction by creating winners and losers. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives, such as the glonacal agency heuristic, global economic and social forces, and empirical data, this paper examines the implications of these changes for equity in education, highlighting how global and national market-oriented policies, practices and outcomes continue to add to the stratification of higher education. Although the benefits of this global phenomenon are enormous, we maintain that the disbenefits are dire and could contribute to the narrowing of universities' traditional missions, increased academic managerialism, the death of academic collegiality, and uneven development and unhealthy competition among universities locally and globally if not carefully considered. We admit that competition will continue to transform universities because the pressures of globalisation, as seen in recent times, increasingly influence higher education systems. However, since universities still operate mainly in their national context, we believe national educational policies can focus on reducing competition with other universities and promoting equity. To cement this way of thinking in universities both nationally and globally, we must understand the critical role of leadership as well as get it right.