M&A and R&D: Asymmetric Effects on acquirers and targets?     

Florian Szücs 《Research Policy》2014

We evaluate the impact of M&A activity on the growth of R&D spending and R&D intensity of 265 acquiring firms and 133 merger targets between 1990 and 2009. We use different matching techniques to construct separate control groups for acquirers and targets and use appropriate difference-in-difference estimation methods to single out the causal effect of mergers on R&D growth and intensity. We find that target firms substantially decrease their R&D efforts after a merger, while the R&D intensity of acquirers drops due to a sharp increase in sales.  相似文献   

Inclusion and achievement: student achievement in secondary schools with higher and lower proportions of pupils designated as having special educational needs     

Martyn Rouse  Lani Florian 《International Journal of Inclusive Education》2013,17(6):481-493

This paper reports on a multi‐method study that examined the effects of including higher and lower proportions of students designated as having special educational needs on student achievement in secondary schools. It explores some of the issues involved in conducting such research and considers the extent to which newly available national data in England can be helpful in answering questions about inclusion and achievement. Questions pertaining to the effects of provision on achievement are discussed within a school reform agenda that emphasizes high academic standards, competition between schools and the identification of pupils with special educational needs.  相似文献   

Evaluating Environmental Knowledge Dimension Convergence to Assess Educational Programme Effectiveness     

Anne K. Liefländer  Franz X. Bogner  Alexandra Kibbe  Florian G. Kaiser 《International Journal of Science Education》2013,35(4):684-702

One aim of environmental education is fostering sustainable environmental action. Some environmental behaviour models suggest that this can be accomplished in part by improving people's knowledge. Recent studies have identified a distinct, psychometrically supported environmental knowledge structure consisting of system, action-related and effectiveness knowledge. Besides system knowledge, which is most often the focus of such studies, incorporating the other knowledge dimensions into these dimensions was suggested to enhance effectiveness. Our study is among the first to implement these dimensions together in an educational campaign and to use these dimensions to evaluate the effectiveness of a programme on water issues. We designed a four-day environmental education programme on water issues for students at an educational field centre. We applied a newly developed multiple-choice instrument using a pre-, post-, retention test design. The knowledge scales were calibrated with the Rasch model. In addition to the commonly assessed individual change in knowledge level, we also measured the change in knowledge convergence, the extent to which the knowledge dimensions merge as a person's environmental knowledge increases, as an innovative indicator of educational success. Following programme participation, students significantly improved in terms of amount learned in each knowledge dimension and in terms of integration of the knowledge dimensions. The effectiveness knowledge shows the least gain, persistence and convergence, which we explain by considering the dependence of the knowledge dimensions on each other. Finally, we discuss emerging challenges for educational researchers and practical implications for environmental educators.  相似文献   

Effects of Direct and Indirect Instruction on Fostering Decision-Making Competence in Socioscientific Issues     

Florian Böttcher  Anke Meisert 《Research in Science Education》2013,43(2):479-506

In this study the effects of different learning environments on the promotion of decision-making competence for the socioscientific issue of genetically modified crops is investigated. The comparison focuses on direct vs. indirect instructions. Therefore on the one hand a sophisticated decision-making strategy was presented to the directly instructed experimental group (1) and had to be applied correctly. On the other hand indirectly instructed students had to invent an appropriate strategy by themselves (2) based on the given information and the structure of the problem context. Group discussions are analysed qualitatively in order (1) to outline how the given strategy was understood and its results were reflected on by the students and (2) to explore the characteristics of invented strategies and their degree of complexity. Results indicate that the direct instruction of complex decision-making strategies may lead to a lack of understanding of the decision process when the given strategy is applied and therefore may cause rejection of the final decision. Indirectly instructed students were able to invent sophisticated decision-making strategies containing compensatory trade-offs. It is concluded that when directly instructing complex decision-making strategies, essential parts of reflection have to be integrated in order to gain greater transparency. Accordingly, empirical evidence has been found to consider indirect instruction as a possible way to foster decision-making strategies for complex socioscientific issues even if compensatory procedures are considered to be necessary.  相似文献   

Projecting images of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad school’: top scorers in educational large-scale assessments as reference societies     

Florian Waldow 《Compare》2017,47(5):647-664

Researchers interested in the global flow of educational ideas and programmes have long been interested in the role of so-called ‘reference societies’. The article investigates how top scorers in large-scale assessments are framed as positive or negative reference societies in the education policy-making debate in German mass media and which functions they fulfil. Top scores in large-scale assessments do not automatically promote a country to the status of a positive reference society. Whether top scorers are perceived as positive or as negative reference societies depends largely on stereotyped prior perceptions that determine how success in these assessments is framed. Among the functions positive and negative reference societies fulfil are making educational reform agendas more plausible and serving as projection screens for conceptions of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ school.  相似文献   

X-ray computed tomography for non-destructive analysis of early Medieval swords     

Jörg Stelzner  Florian Gauß  Philipp Schuetz 《文物保护研究》2016,61(2):86-101

The analysis of early Medieval swords is of great significance due to the eminent position of the find category in the study of the early Medieval period. X-ray computed tomography is a non-destructive analytical method permitting the collection of data that otherwise could only be gathered with considerable effort and much damage to the object. Beyond the usual morphological and dimensional parameters, the method allows for the fast and accurate gathering of knowledge about the construction and manufacturing processes of sword blades and can also be applied to block-lifted swords. Preservation condition and related artifacts caused by beam hardening may be limiting factors; however, in most instances interpretation of the data remains possible.  相似文献   

Development and validation of the IMEB-M,a German questionnaire for assessing topic-specific epistemic beliefs     

Florian Berding 《Journal of Vocational Education & Training》2017,69(4):517-539

Epistemic beliefs are individual beliefs about knowledge and knowledge acquisition. Empirical studies indicate that learners’ epistemic beliefs influence their learning processes and success (e.g. motivation, text comprehension, learning strategy selection, grades). Teachers and trainers can support their apprentices in developing preferable epistemic beliefs to facilitate learning. To do this, instructors need information on learners’ current beliefs for lesson planning and monitoring epistemic beliefs development. The following paper reports the validation of a tool for generating this kind of information: the Instrument for Measuring Epistemic Beliefs in Marketing. The instrument validation is based on three studies (Study I: 225 university trained business administration students; Study II: 531 vocationally trained retailers/wholesalers; Study III: 179 vocationally trained bank assistants). It reveals high reliabilities (α values about .700), stable factor structures, and incremental validity in comparison to general epistemic beliefs. The new questionnaire is able to predict grades in marketing and can be used to diagnose apprentices’ epistemic beliefs for adjusting instruction to learners’ preconditions. Findings based on the new instrument indicate that apprentices show partly unfavourable epistemic beliefs. As a result, supporting learners in developing preferable beliefs provides an opportunity to increase their learning success.  相似文献   

The effect of positive reappraisal on the availability of self-control resources and self-regulated learning*     

Anne-Kathrin Stiller  M. Florian Kattner  Catherine Gunzenhauser  Bernhard Schmitz 《教育心理学》2019,39(1):86-111

Effectively regulating negative emotions is important for successful self-regulated learning. However, research has hardly examined which emotion regulation strategies benefit self-regulated learning. In an experimental study, it was examined whether positive reappraisal facilitates self-regulated learning by counterbalancing the depletion of self-control resources. Sixty-one university students engaged in either positive reappraisal or expressive suppression to regulate negative emotions induced by a film clip and then worked on a self-regulated learning task. Participants who engaged in positive reappraisal experienced more positive emotions after the film and had more self-control resources available than participants who used expressive suppression. Moreover, positive reappraisal increased skin conductance during emotion regulation, as compared to expressive suppression. Irrespective of emotion regulation type, positive emotions predicted post-film availability of self-control resources which was positively associated with subsequent self-regulated learning. The results demonstrate beneficial affective and resource-related consequences of positive reappraisal as well as its potential for fostering self-regulated learning.  相似文献   

Is the Item-Position Effect in Achievement Measures Induced by Increasing Item Difficulty?     

Florian Zeller  Siegbert Reiß  Karl Schweizer 《Structural equation modeling》2017,24(5):745-754

This work examines the hypothesis that the arrangement of items according to increasing difficulty is the real source of what is considered the item-position effect. A confusion of the 2 effects is possible because in achievement measures the items are arranged according to their difficulty. Two item subsets of Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM), one following the original item order, and the other one including randomly ordered items, were applied to a sample of 266 students. Confirmatory factor analysis models including representations of both the item-position effect and a possible effect due to increasing item difficulty were compared. The results provided evidence for both effects. Furthermore, they indicated a substantial relation between the item-position effects of the 2 APM subsets, whereas no relation was found for item difficulty. This indicates that the item-position effect stands on its own and is not due to increasing item difficulty.  相似文献   

Developing Personalized Education: A Dynamic Framework     

Tetzlaff  Leonard  Schmiedek  Florian  Brod  Garvin 《Educational Psychology Review》2021,33(3):863-882

Personalized education—the systematic adaptation of instruction to individual learners—has been a long-striven goal. We review research on personalized education that has been conducted in the laboratory, in the classroom, and in digital learning environments. Across all learning environments, we find that personalization is most successful when relevant learner characteristics are measured repeatedly during the learning process and when these data are used to adapt instruction in a systematic way. Building on these observations, we propose a novel, dynamic framework of personalization that conceptualizes learners as dynamic entities that change during and in interaction with the instructional process. As these dynamics manifest on different timescales, so do the opportunities for instructional adaptations—ranging from setting appropriate learning goals at the macroscale to reacting to affective-motivational fluctuations at the microscale. We argue that instructional design needs to take these dynamics into account in order to adapt to a specific learner at a specific point in time. Finally, we provide some examples of successful, dynamic adaptations and discuss future directions that arise from a dynamic conceptualization of personalization.

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