Using Experimental Research to Test Instructional Effectiveness: A Case Study

Cross-cultural competence is now regarded as a critical student learning outcome by many U.S. higher educational institutions. It requires in part that students be able to empathize with people whose ethno-cultural, economic, political, and/or geographic backgrounds are different from their own—a quality that we are labeling global empathy. Yet colleges and universities frequently find it difficult to develop global empathy among their students. We conducted an experiment to investigate whether different instructional techniques—traditional lecture, video news reports, and an online game—or undergraduate students’ academic majors are associated with variations in indicators of global empathy. Statistically significant variations in survey data were found only among students majoring in psychology and in responses to two survey questions. Two behavioral measures did not reveal any statistically significant variation. A larger sample, longer exposure to treatment condition, or other changes to the experimental design might elucidate stronger evidence that instructional method or undergraduate academic major affects the development of global empathy, but this type of research may not be feasible at colleges and universities where enrollments are small and faculty lack necessary resources.     

Facilitating the Delivery of Justice Services to Rural and Remote Communities

There are many projects that facilitate the delivery of services to various cyber communities around the world (see S. Turkle , Life on the Screen. Identity in the Age of the Internet, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1996). The major projects concentrate on helping the building up of these cyber communities and facilitating the training and awareness raising of these communities. The communities are educated on the use of technology and the importance of using internet and multimedia based technology to enhance some or a few aspects of their lives. The delivery of health and justice related services require the development of overall technology infrastructure that incorporates the use of existing and planned telecommunications developments for remote and rural communities. The facilitation required for the delivery of these services to remote and rural areas requires that the government and private sector cooperate to provide the necessary environment (P. Uimonen Internet as a Tool for Social Development UNRISD, Geneva, 1997) . In the developed world this has been achieved by the governments providing generic funding for the advancement of the telecommunication carriers that in turn provide the infrastructure development to rural areas. In the developing world, the issues are very different and there is currently aid related funds being channelled to improve the telecommunication barriers faced by these countries (International Telecommunications Union Report, 1997) . This paper attempts to outline a model to deliver justice services to remote and rural communities. The infrastructure issues that help to deliver such services effectively and an evaluation format for such a project will be outlined. The training issues involved in such a project will also be discussed. The paper will identify factors that help to provide these services to a larger proportion of the rural population.     

Predictors of Level of Voice in Adolescent Girls: Ethnicity,Attachment, and Gender Role Socialization

The current study empirically examined predictors of level of voice (ethnicity, attachment, and gender role socialization) in a diverse sample of 108 14-year-old girls. Structural equation modeling results indicated that parental attachment predicted level of voice with authority figures, and gender role socialization predicted level of voice with authority figures and peers. Both masculinity and femininity were salient for higher levels of voice with authority figures whereas higher scores on masculinity contributed to higher levels of voice with peers. These findings suggest that, contrary to previous theoretical work, femininity itself is not a risk factor for low levels of voice. In addition, African-American girls had higher levels of voice with teachers and classmates than did Caucasian girls, and girls who were in a school with a greater concentration of ethnic minorities had higher levels of voice with peers than did girls at a school with fewer minority students.

Room of One's Own: 1920s Feminist Utopias

Virginia Woolf's aspiration in A Room of One's Own (1929) for a private space and independence for the 'uneducated' women who would write fiction was echoed in Jipping Street (1928), the fictional autobiography of the working-class Kathleen Woodward, as well as by numerous other women during the period. This article asks why this wish for a room emerged in the twenties, and what is shows about the political affect of feminism at that time. One of the effects of post-suffrage feminism was that working-class women's experience began to be not only observed but listened to, written down and published, but real changes in the legal and economic position of women only came slowly. Both Woolf's polemic and Woodward's fictional autobiography are diatribes against poverty and laments for women's wasted lives. Neither idealized suffering; poverty in their texts was an injustice that aroused anger, not a state of abjection or redemption which required an anguished identification. When these two books were published, just after women's suffrage was achieved, hopes were high. The thirties were a more brutal decade, with unemployment and the growth of fascism, and Woolf's Three Guineas (1938) is darker in tone. Neither Woolf nor Woodward had faith in conventional politics. Instead both writers chose silence, solitude and the aesthetic seduction of words and thoughts. Neither wanted to enter the world of men, but nor did they want to live lives like their mothers. Both these books require of women an inner change. The room represents a transitional space. There was no clear vision of the future yet. As so often with feminist thought, the wish is for a break with the past, a resistance to culture and a change in human nature.     

‘Couldn't You Have Got a Computer Program to Do That for You?’ Reflections on the Impact that Machines Have on the Ways We Think About and Undertake Qualitative Research in the Socio-Legal Community

This article addresses the role that computer software programs play in the sort of textual analysis that has typically been the preserve of the qualitative researcher. Drawing on two distinct research projects conducted separately by the authors, it considers the transformation of social science software from a competent assistant that can help to sort and retrieve data, to an intelligent assistant capable of independently finding trends and counter-arguments, to a co-investigator capable of doing things that human researchers cannot. In addition to challenging some of the claims of ‘siliconistas’, this article considers the impact of new technology on the aesthetics of research and the professional identity of qualitative researchers. In doing so, it raises some important questions about how well we are training early-career academics for the challenges that they are likely to face in the future world of socio-legal empirical research.     

The challenge of design of intergovernmental relations in economies in transition

The governments of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are at a crucial juncture in their movement from highly centralized command economies to more decentralized market economies. While there is a belief in these countries that decentralization brings greater economic efficiency, the reality is that such a transition is a difficult process. This paper examines what types of administrative reforms are needed for the decentralization process, how far along the countries are with respect to these reforms, and what reforms are missing. As we discuss, many of the necessary administration reforms are missing and we argue that more attention must be paid to these elements for successful decentralization of these governments.

This paper examines the recent experience and reform needs of the key administrative aspects of the design of intergovernmental relations in countries in transition in Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union. There is a widespread realization in all of these countries that decentralizing government will help increase efficiency in the public sector just as privatization will improve efficiency in their economies. Decentralization of government operations is also attractive as a way to cement a democratic form of government. Despite the appearances of the existence of an already decentralized system, such as in the case of the Soviet Union, this experiment started in practically all cases with a lack of institutions and experience on how decentralized government operations should be organized.

As different as these countries are, there are many similarities in the reform process they are following in order to decentralize government structure. While the basic components of a decentralized system of government are emerging in many of these countries the structure of government has not fully evolved in a manner that can support such a decentralized system. Often, governments remain structured along a vertical hierarchy: information, budgetary authority, and revenue pass from the central government down to subnational levels of government while little communication or interaction exists at a horizontal level. In general, the assignment of revenue and expenditure has not been clearly defined among the two or three levels of government, central government transfers continue to occur in a relatively ad hoc manner, and the entire budgeting system still rests in many cases on more or less formal system of negotiations and bargaining among the different levels of government. There has been some change in this structure in certain countries. Over the last three years, both Poland and Hungary have legally increased the automony of subnational governments. In 1994 in Russia a new and more transparent system of intergovernmental grants has been established between the federal government and the regions. In 1994 also, Latvia introduced a more transparent formula-driven, transfer formula for the regional and municipal governments.

The focus of this paper is to develop a “blue print” for necessary changes in organization and administration of intergovernmental relations in countries in transition. While many experts have recently been discussing the public finance policy components of this new, evolving relationship among levels of government, less attention has been paid to the structural and administrative challenges and the information design issues that must be met in order to develop and support a system of intergovernmental relations.

The paper is organized as follows: First we review the major responsibilities and their allocation among levels of government, the assignment of revenue sources, and the system of transfers. We then turn to a discussion of the current experience of Eastern European and NIS countries in the context of the structural components of an intergovernmental fiscal system. Next, we analyze the organizational reforms that are necessary for the efficient functioning of a decentralized system of government in the economies in transition. Finally we “rate” the transition economies in relation to their current design of the system of intergovernmental relations and support mechanisms.     

Post-development theory and the question of alternatives: a view from Africa

Post-development theorists have declared development obsolete and bankrupt and have called for ‘alternatives to development’. What do they mean by such calls and what should be the African response to such calls? In this paper I will attempt to address three important questions: first, what is meant by post-development theory's call for ‘alternatives to development’? Second, why consider post-development theory from an African perspective? Third, what contributions can a consideration of African difference and diversity make towards debate on ‘alternatives to development’? I conclude by arguing that increased consideration of the African experience would be valuable for all who are seeking alternative ways of dealing with the problems that development purports to address.