Frederick J. Brigham, Christopher Claude, Jason Chow, Colleen Lloyd Eddy, Nicholas Gage and John William McKenna
Four reputed leaders for the coming years in the field of special education for individuals with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) each with a slightly different…
Abstract
Four reputed leaders for the coming years in the field of special education for individuals with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) each with a slightly different perspective on the field were asked to respond independently to a prompt asking what does special education mean for students with EBD and what is being done and how do we maintain tradition? The contributors' responses to the prompt are presented and then summarized across the essays. A remarkable consistency emerges across the independent essays. In addition to the tradition of providing a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment, the contributors identify needs to support teachers serving this population. Needs in teacher training and the expertise required to meet the needs of individuals with EBD are outlined as well as potential contributions of technology to carry out specific tasks. We conclude with a call for increased advocacy for use of the knowledge that we currently possess and that which will soon be discovered to support students with EBD as well as their teachers. We also note that the contributors' names are listed alphabetically to acknowledge the equality of each person to the final product.
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Nuraddeen Abubakar Nuhu, Kevin Baird and Sophia Su
This study examines the impact of environmental activity management (EAM) on triple bottom line (TBL) performance and the role that sustainability strategies play in mediating…
Abstract
This study examines the impact of environmental activity management (EAM) on triple bottom line (TBL) performance and the role that sustainability strategies play in mediating these relationships. Data were collected using a survey of Australian managers and analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM). The findings indicate that each of the three levels of EAM – Environmental Activity Analysis, Environmental Activity Cost Analysis, and Environmental Activity Based Costing – influence-specific aspects of performance, either directly and/or indirectly through environmental and social sustainability strategies. The findings suggest that managers could enhance their use of EAM practices through the use of sustainability strategies in order to enhance performance. This study provides empirical insight into the impact that EAM practices and environmental and social sustainability strategies have on all three aspects of TBL performance.
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Eric Groce, Tina L. Heafner and Katherine A. O’Connor
The Scopes Monkey Trial is a landmark court case in American history and has often been referred to as “The Trial of the Century.” It provides a curricular platform for…
Abstract
The Scopes Monkey Trial is a landmark court case in American history and has often been referred to as “The Trial of the Century.” It provides a curricular platform for understanding changes in American society, populace tensions with shifting social and moral views, gaps in economic prosperity, and the outcomes of urbanization. Studying this pivotal and historical trial – along with the context surrounding it – offers readers a dynamic lens to view powerful social and cultural insights at the beginning of the twentieth century. Additionally, academic freedom issues, which have a history in our nation's courts, (Patterson & Chandler, 2008) as well as current dialogue among educators (see the November/December issue of Social Education), and are at the very center of the Scopes Trial, require critical examination. Most importantly, it exemplifies the type of interdisciplinary content social studies educators should be promoting, a goal of 21st Century Teaching and Learning and Common Core Standards. In this article, we provide a brief historical context setting the stage for the Scopes Monkey Trial, a daily synopsis of significant points in the trial, a rationale for teaching the Scopes Trial, and instructional teaching resources with particular emphasis on books, DVD/media, and web-based materials.
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Alex J. Bowers and Bradford R. White
The purpose of this paper is to examine the independent effects of principal background, training and experience as well as teacher academic qualifications on school proficiency…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the independent effects of principal background, training and experience as well as teacher academic qualifications on school proficiency growth through time.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors analyzed the entire population of all elementary and middle schools in the state of Illinois, n=3,154 schools, from 2000 to 2001 through 2005-2006 using growth mixture modeling. The authors examined growth at the school level in the percentage of students meeting or exceeding standards on the Illinois Standard Achievement Test, analyzing separate models for Chicago and non-Chicago schools.
Findings
The results suggest that there are two statistically significantly different latent school proficiency trajectory subgroups through the six-year time period, one high and one low, for both Chicago and non-Chicago schools. In addition, the models suggest that teacher academic qualifications, principal training, principal experience as a principal and an assistant principal, and experience of the principal as a teacher previously in their schools are significantly related to school proficiency growth over time, dependent upon school context.
Practical implications
Recent studies on the independent effects of principal experience, training and teacher academic qualifications have shown inconsistent results on school achievement growth. The authors demonstrate that principal training and background may have an effect on school-level proficiency score growth.
Originality/value
This study is one of the first to examine statistically different proficiency growth trajectories using an entire state-wide data set over a long-term, six-year timeframe.
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Timothy G. Ford and Patrick B. Forsyth
The evidence is strong that the instability of teacher rosters in urban school settings has negative consequences for student learning, but our concern is with the opposite…
Abstract
Purpose
The evidence is strong that the instability of teacher rosters in urban school settings has negative consequences for student learning, but our concern is with the opposite phenomenon: What is the value added to the organization when a school's teaching roster is stable over time? Our theory of teacher corps stability hinges on the claim that the stability of a teacher corps over time is a sine qua non that, under certain conditions, permits formation of the social capital needed to catalyze school effectiveness.
Design/methodology/approach
We test this claim using longitudinal data from 72 schools in a large, urban southwestern US school district. We first identified a subset of 47 schools with either chronic teacher turnover (high, stable turnover) or a stable teacher roster (low, stable turnover) via school-level HLM growth modeling techniques. These classifications were then used as a covariate in a series of HLM growth models investigating its relationship to growth in structural, relational and cognitive social capital over time.
Findings
Our findings sustain a claim of the importance of teacher corps stability. In our sample of urban schools, we found robust increases in the relational and cognitive dimensions of social capital over time in those schools with stable rosters. Furthermore, schools with chronic turnover were declining significantly in relational social capital, but no appreciable growth in structural social capital was found in either stable roster or chronic teacher turnover schools.
Practical implications
Given the nature of teacher corps stability and its relationship to key organizational outcomes, school leaders play a central role in realizing teacher corps stability within their school. A certain amount of this effort must necessarily be focused on retaining a stable corps of quality, happy, committed teachers. However, building social capital concerns the active engagement of all actors; thus, school leaders need to think beyond retention to how the teachers that remain can play larger leadership roles in this process.
Originality/value
Few studies have examined the positive benefits that can emerge in schools where the majority of teachers remain year after year. Collectively, the study findings suggest that teacher corps stability can provide fertile conditions for the development of social capital that has the potential to enhance school effectiveness and that its staff can leverage for school improvement.
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Sonia Jain, Alison K. Cohen, Kevin Huang, Thomas L. Hanson and Gregory Austin
– School climate, or the physical and social conditions of the learning environment, has implications for academic achievement. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Abstract
Purpose
School climate, or the physical and social conditions of the learning environment, has implications for academic achievement. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors examine how school climate varies by school-level characteristics in California using administrative data and the California School Climate Survey.
Findings
Teachers/staff at secondary schools, schools in large cities, schools that serve low-income populations, Hispanic- and black-majority schools, and/or low-performing schools reported less positive school climates, including staff/student relationships, norms and standards, student facilitative behaviors, and perceived safety, than their counterparts, paralleling other education inequity trends.
Originality/value
The authors encourage educators and school leaders to use data-driven and evidence-based strategies to overcome systematic inequities in positive school climate in order to create social contexts that nurture students’ academic progress and teacher retention particularly in historically under-resourced schools.
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Abstract
The scientific correspondence between Harrod and Robertson was initiated by Harrod’s criticism of Robertson’s Banking Policy and the Price Level (1926).7 Harrod first wrote on 18 May 1926 (letter 2) raising at once the following “salient point”: Much of your argument depends on the view that justifiable expansions and contractions as defined by you are desirable. Why are they desirable? You give reasons on p. 22 why you think some instability in output desirable. But the reasons mentioned there (and I can’t find any others) don’t seem particularly directed to show that the special form of instability constituted by the so-called “justifiable” expansions and contractions is desirable. They seem to me to show that perhaps some instability, that, presumably, of less degree than we have been accustomed to in the past, is good, but by no means precisely how much is good. Thus, suppose the “hypothetical group member” or “the actual workman” of p. 19 were able to govern output according to their own self interest, there would still, according to the arguments of ch. 2, be some instability. Would not that be enough? Or if you want more, why stop at the “justifiable”? Why not have some of that due to “secondary” causes? It seems to me that you have been led away by purely aesthetic interests to identify that more moderate amount of instability which we really need (as shown on p. 22.) with that which we would get: (i) if secondary causes were removed; and (ii) if control of output stayed where it is now – in the hands of the entrepreneur. I don’t see how you can say to the banks more than “damp down fluctuation a bit, but leave some fluctuation, as that is healthful for the body economic”.He added two notes to his letter, in the first of which he commented upon the four proposed courses of policy outlined by Robertson on pp. 25–26 of his book. In the second note Harrod suggested that Robertson’s calculations in Appendix I to Ch. 5 of Banking Policy assumed the following behaviour of the public: (i) People do not allow for the effect of their withholding on the price level (this is reasonable). (ii) They are ignorant as the future course of inflation (or do nothing to meet it). (iii) On this basis they decide what withholding is necessary to restore H, decide that it would be too much effort to restore it at once, and…spread the restoration over K – 1 days. It so happens that by choosing K – 1 their 2 errors (or failures to take everything into account) cancel each other out, and they do effect the restoration in that time. If K or K – 2 had been chosen, this would not have been so.Harrod further argued that Robertson’s “so-called reasonable assumption of a restoration in K – 1 days is purely arbitrary,” and that “all this reasoning is rendered of doubtful value by the fact that we must suppose an alteration in view as to ‘the appropriate proportion between Real Hoarding and Real Income’ during the process of inflation. Not only will people not replenish H at once, but they may well voluntarily reduce it.”
This chapter investigates the nature of the transformation of macroeconomics by focusing on the impact of the Great Depression on economic doctrines. There is no doubt that the…
Abstract
This chapter investigates the nature of the transformation of macroeconomics by focusing on the impact of the Great Depression on economic doctrines. There is no doubt that the Great Depression exerted an enormous influence on economic thought, but the exact nature of its impact should be examined more carefully. In this chapter, I examine the transformation from a perspective which emphasizes the interaction between economic ideas and economic events, and the interaction between theory and policy rather than the development of economic theory. More specifically, I examine the evolution of what became known as macroeconomics after the Depression in terms of an ongoing debate among the “stabilizers” and their critics. I further suggest using four perspectives, or schools of thought, as measures to locate the evolution and transformation; the gold standard mentality, liquidationism, the Treasury view, and the real-bills doctrine. By highlighting these four economic ideas, I argue that what happened during the Great Depression was the retreat of the gold standard mentality, the complete demise of liquidationism and the Treasury view, and the strange survival of the real-bills doctrine. Each of those transformations happened not in response to internal debates in the discipline, but in response to government policies and real-world events.
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Mohammad Ashraful Ferdous Chowdhury, Mohammad Shoyeb, Chowdhury Akbar and Md. Nazrul Islam
The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of risk sharing and non-risk sharing instruments on both the profitability of Islamic banks and the economic growth of the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of risk sharing and non-risk sharing instruments on both the profitability of Islamic banks and the economic growth of the country. This study also aims to improve the profit and loss sharing-based asset growth of Islamic banks.
Methodology/approach
The data for this study are obtained from the annual reports of all Islamic banks from Bangladesh using Bank scope database and annual report for the period of 1983–2014. The research uses Autoregressive Distributive Lag approach.
Findings
The findings reveal that risk sharing instruments are positively related to profitability and the economic growth of the country. This study also finds that non-risk sharing instruments play a predominant role in the profitability of the Islamic bank but are negatively related to the economic growth of the country.
Research implications
Banks and other financial institutions need to pay greater attention to systemic risk created by risk transfer and apply risk sharing methods of financing more vigorously than has hitherto been the case.
Originality/value
This study will also contribute to the literature as relatively few Islamic financial literatures deal with the relationship between equity financing and profitability which may make a strong contribution to the area of Islamic finance.
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Martin Plöckinger, Ewald Aschauer, Martin R.W. Hiebl and Roman Rohatschek
In recent years, numerous studies have investigated whether individual executives and their characteristics relate to financial reporting choices. In this article, we review…
Abstract
In recent years, numerous studies have investigated whether individual executives and their characteristics relate to financial reporting choices. In this article, we review archival, experimental and survey research on the influence of individual executives on corporate financial reporting and use upper echelons theory as our organizing framework. Our review of 60 studies shows that research consistently finds that top management executives exert significant influence on financial reporting decisions, particularly on disclosure quality. Empirical research has developed promising approaches to investigate executives' psychological attributes and character traits. The results of studies examining the influence of demographic characteristics of individual executives are, however, sometimes contradictory and ambiguous. Nevertheless, the overall empirical results we review are supportive of upper echelons predictions. Additional research in this field is needed to clarify the influence of unexamined upper echelon characteristics, important moderator variables, and adverse selection effects. We also suggest that future research more closely investigates the magnitudes of managerial influence and adopts a more holistic perspective on financial reporting outcomes.