Educational Publishing Research Articles

Catholic Educational Publishing between the Two Wars: The Case of the Publishers SEI of Turin and La Scuola of Brescia.

Catholic Educational Publishing between the Two Wars: The Case of the Publishers SEI of Turin and La Scuola of Brescia.

Henri Médard & Shane Doyle, eds. Slavery in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa. Eastern African Studies series. Athens: Ohio University Press; Oxford: James Currey; Kampala: Fountain Publishers; Nairobi: Eastern African Education Publishers, 2007. xiv + 273 pp. Maps. Tables. Notes. References. Index. $59.95. Cloth. $26.95. Paper.

Henri Médard & Shane Doyle, eds. Slavery in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa. Eastern African Studies series. Athens: Ohio University Press; Oxford: James Currey; Kampala: Fountain Publishers; Nairobi: Eastern African Education Publishers, 2007. xiv + 273 pp. Maps. Tables. Notes. References. Index. 26.95. Paper. - Volume 51 Issue 3

The latest news and offers

To promote Road Safety Week (5–11 November), Roadwise Educational Publishers is offering six Child Care readers the chance to win a copy of Let’s Go to the Carnival, Let’s go to the Balloons and Skills and Activity Book 1 (see review on page 19). The books are particularly suitable for children aged seven plus, (but can be used with younger children).

Scholarly communication costs in australian higher education

This paper reports on the development and application of a model used to estimate the costs of scholarly communication (i.e. scholarly publishing and related activities) in Australian higher education. A systems perspective was used to frame a review of the literature on the costs involved in the entire scholarly communication value chain and inform the development of a scholarly communication system cost model. This paper presents estimated scholarly communication costs for higher education institutions in Australia, based upon the modelling, local data collections and stakeholder consultation, that may prove useful in the management of institutional budgets and priorities. It represents the first systematic attempt to estimate the costs of scholarly publishing related activities in Australia, and it could be easily applied elsewhere.

Teachers Need to Share Their Ideas

NO MORE than a quick glance at any journal that deals with K-12 education reveals that the authors of most articles are college professors, administrators, or representatives of national committees. While I respect the research that comes out of universities, the opinions and experience of administrators, and the direction of national committees, the articles I find myself most interested in, the ones I am most likely to read in depth, are written by classroom teachers who are sharing the souls of their classrooms. I find it ironic that classroom teachers, with treasure chests full of ideas, rely almost exclusively on sources outside the classroom for information about education. Why don't teachers, who work with today's young people every day, write more of the articles for their colleagues? It is easy to point out that college professors teach fewer hours per week than K-12 teachers, so they have more time to write. It is equally easy to argue that professors work under the pressure of the publish or perish rule, so they must submit manuscripts for publication. Both statements are true. Yet it is all too easy for educators to cede professional authority to those with advanced degrees or committee appointments. And when teachers do fail to share their stories, they deny their colleagues access to reliable, valuable, and direct sources of information. Classroom teachers test, modify, and clarify lessons every day in the most important research lab we have. Unfortunately, they too often keep the results of their work to themselves. That needs to change. Teachers need to share their ideas, their strategies, their successes, and their enthusiasm with one another. Over the past several years, I have worked closely with three committees for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. The most important thing I learned from the National Board is that classroom teachers need to take more control over their own profession. By rule, classroom teachers make up two-thirds of the National Board itself, and they strongly influence its direction. I would like to apply the National Board's model to publishing in education and propose that classroom teachers voice their opinions, share their stories, and write two-thirds of the articles for education journals. Recently, I taught a graduate-level night class on how to write for education journals. All the students were teachers, and we discussed how to match an idea with an appropriate journal, how to gather research materials, and how to write and edit a manuscript. From the first night, every teacher had ideas from the classroom to share, and before we were done, every one had produced a manuscript to submit for publication. That didn't surprise me. I expected that all of them could write articles. What did surprise me was how passionate they became about the articles and about sharing their experiences. A few months later, one of the teachers from that class mailed me a photocopy of his article, which had been published in a journal for science teachers. …

Peer Review Anew: Three Principles and a Case Study in Postpublication Quality Assurance

Over the last 15 years, the Internet has enabled new modes of authorship, new forms of open licensing and distribution, and new forms of collaboration and peer production to flourish. But in turn, new anxieties have arisen, especially concerning quality assurance, peer review, reuse, and modification. New innovations are appearing in peer review, endorsement, the measurement of trust, and the understanding of reputation, but without any systematic analysis of the general principles of quality assurance and peer review in this new era. In this paper, we propose a general set of principles for understanding what peer review was in the past and how it should be applied today to different kinds of content and in new platforms for managing quality. The principles stress an analysis not only on the content in materials but also on their context of use. Our focus is on open educational resources, and we present a case study of the open education project Connexions' lens system for quality assurance and review. However, the principles can be applied across multiple levels of knowledge production, including scholarship in engineering and science and reference materials in addition to educational publishing.

Book Review: Patricia H. Thornton Markets from Culture: Institutional logics and organizational decisions in higher education publishing

Book Review: Patricia H. Thornton Markets from Culture: Institutional logics and organizational decisions in higher education publishing

Educational Publishing in China: Status Quo, Problems and Counter Measures

In China, educational publishing is devoted to publishing mainly textbooks and teaching materials. For a long time, education publishing has dominated others in China’s publishing industry. However, after entering the new century, especially in the last 2 years, there has been the impact of changes in the College-Entrance Examination, the Invitation to Bid for Compilation and Publication of Textbooks, government procurement and Scientific and Technological Advancement for supplementary books. Therefore, publishing for education has been losing its previous major role and dominance. For making a leap forward and breakthrough in educational publication, we must open up a new train of thought for the development of educational publishing, we need three distinct transformations: first, change in publishing mode from extensive to intensive growth. Second, transformation from variety-scale to market-scale expansion. Third, transformation from being just a provider of content to one providing both content and services.

Educational Publishing in India

Educational Publishing in India

Changing times

Educational publishers are having to adapt their practice in order to meet the demands of our technology-driven age.

The latest news and offers

To promote Road Safety Week (5–11 November), Roadwise Educational Publishers is offering six Child Care readers the chance to win a copy of Let’s Go to the Carnival, Let’s go to the Balloons and Skills and Activity Book 1 (see review on page 19). The books are particularly suitable for children aged seven plus, (but can be used with younger children).

The New Zeitschrift für Psychologie / Journal of Psychology

Starting with this, the first issue in 2007, the Zeitschrift fur Psychologie is appearing in a new format and style. There are two main changes. First, the Journal is now being published in English – and accordingly, the original title has been extended to include the English form of the title. It will from now on be called Zeitschrift fur Psychologie / Journal of Psychology. Second, in the future each issue will be devoted to a particular topic. The need for these changes in the Zeitschrift fur Psychologie results from the changed journal landscape in the field of psychology. There are of course many reasons for the changes. For one, there are few German-speaking researchers who do not wish to publish in English, as English-language papers are necessary for research to be accepted and read by the international psychological community. And for another, through the change in language to one that is more widely understood, and also through the inclusion of the online version of the Zeitschrift fur Psychologie / Journal of Psychology in the PsycARTICLESTM database and Hogrefe’s own PsyCONTENT system, readers worldwide can be reached even more easily. PsycARTICLESTM is a database of full-text articles from more than 50 journals published by the American Psychological Association, the APA Educational Publishing Foundation, and the Canadian Psychological Association, as well as the Hogrefe & Huber group’s English-language journals. PsyCONTENT is the Hogrefe and Huber group’s own online journal system, including some 28 psychology journals. As has happened with other German-language journals that have changed to the English language and been integrated into both the PsycARTICLESTM and PsyCONTENT systems, the readership and impact of the Zeitschrift fur Psychologie / Journal of Psychology, we hope, will increase substantially. The Zeitschrift fur Psychologie, originally called Zeitschrift fur Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, was established in 1890. In other words, it is the second oldest psychology Journal in the world (Gundlach, 1991). Hermann Ebbinghaus was one of the founding editors, with Hermann von Helmholtz, Georg Elias Muller, and Carl Stumpf, among others, serving as co-editors. Karl Buhler, Wolfgang Kohler, Otto Selz, and Max Wertheimer are just some of the psychologists whose pioneering work was originally published in the early days of the Journal. It was because of this long and proud tradition of the Zeitschrift fur Psychologie that we were reluctant to abandon the original title, and so led us to the slightly unusual step of simply adding what librarians call the parallel title: Journal of Psychology. During its long history, the Zeitschrift fur Psychologie / Journal of Psychology has always been an outlet for all disciplines within the field of psychology, and not only for a particular specialization or branch of psychology. This tradition will be maintained – although, as indicated earlier in this editorial, only thematic or topical issues will be published in the future. This will ensure that the individual contributions are more homogeneous and, we hope, will increase the attractiveness of the Journal for readers. When the Journal was founded, German was the lingua franca of science. In many disciplines, scientists from around the world published their findings in journals such as Annalen der Chemie (with Justus von Liebig as cofounder), Annalen der Physik (in which, for instance, Max Planck first published a paper on quantum physics), Zeitschrift fur Physik (with Albert Einstein in the founding committee) and, well, Zeitschrift fur Psychologie, in which, for example, Raymond Dodge, David Katz, Kurt Lewin, Hugo Munsterberg, and Charles Spearman published some of their influential work. As was the case then, the Zeitschrift fur Psychologie / Journal of Psychology will continue to publish research from all branches of empirical psychology that is clearly of international interest and relevance. Guest editors – in many, but not all cases drawn from the Journal’s editorial team – will deal with each specific subject or topic. The typical issue of the journal will commence with an introductory overview article on the topic

Aboriginal Well-Being: Canada’s Continuing Challenge (review)

Reviewed by: Aboriginal Well-Being: Canada’s Continuing Challenge James Frideres Jerry White, Dan Beavon, and Nicholas Spence, eds. Aboriginal Well-Being: Canada’s Continuing Challenge. Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing, 2007. 246 pp. $36.95 sc. The volume is one of a series of publications produced by the Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium which is housed at the University of Western Ontario and headed by Dr. Jerry White. While the goal of this book is to provide the reader with information on the health and well-being of Aboriginal people in Canada, it approaches the topic from a methodological perspective. Put another way, while the reader will certainly learn about the well-being of Aboriginal people, the authors are really focused on trying to develop appropriate, comparative, and reliable measures of well-being. There is some contextual information about Aboriginal people in Canada, but the authors are more focused on developing a set of indicators. Why do I mention this? I do so because the reader needs to be forewarned so that s/he not approach the manuscript with expectations that will not be fulfilled. However, it is an ambitious volume concerned with the analysis of the well-being of Aboriginal [End Page 218] groups in Canada as well as around the world. The work is truly exceptional on many counts. The book’s wide comparative breadth, the methodological sophistication, the up-to-date references, and the critical analysis of the data make this book a notable accomplishment. The book is a wonderful compilation of information regarding the well-being of Aboriginal people in Canada and in other “settler” societies. Given that the chapters are written by different authors, who in turn use different measures of “well-being,” specific comparisons are difficult. Nevertheless, data from the census, administrative units, e.g., Indian Affairs, and other sources are used to empirically assess the concept of well-being. Throughout the book, the authors acknowledge these methodological issues and focus on patterns and trends that illuminate the results. The authors, having access to data that might not otherwise be available to other researchers, make the best use of their databases as they mine the data to its fullest. The volume is comprised of ten chapters placed within three parts. The first part introduces the concept of “well-being” and introduces general theoretical and methodological issues that researchers have to deal with when measuring the concept. This section provides an excellent theoretical discussion of the concept of well-being, why it is important, why it needs to be measured at different levels, and the implications of introducing such a concept into the language when dealing with Aboriginal people. Part 2 looks at a Registered Indian Human Development Index and considers changes that have taken place between 1981 and 2001. This section also examines sex equality and well-being. Finally, it provides a four-country (Australia, Canada, United States, New Zealand) comparison of Aboriginal people’s well-being. Part 3 moves to a more macro level of analysis and focuses on developing a community well-being index. This section begins by outlining what a community well-being index is, why it is important, and how one might empirically measure it. An initial application of the model is used for measuring community well-being of Inuit. Later, a comparison of well-being in Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities is provided. The penultimate chapter assesses the impact of specific claim settlement on community well-being and finds little effect. The final chapter reviews the empirical results presented in the preceding chapters and provides the reader with an assessment and critique of the objective and subjective dimensions of the concept “community well-being.” While space prevents a detailed discussion of each chapter, some of them deserve special mention. The comparative chapters are particularly important in that they allow both intra-group comparisons as well as inter-group comparisons. For example, one chapter provides a comparison of well-being between First Nations communities from one time period to another. In another case the authors compare Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities in Canada. I might add that [End Page 219] Indian Affairs, at one point in time, provided similar comparisons, but...

Constructing school knowledge after the Wall: the case of textbook publishing in the former German Democratic Republic

Organisational ecology and world cultural perspectives are used to analyse the struggle of the former East German textbook publisher Volk und Wissen after reunification. We argue that the normative expectations of Western Germany with respect to instructional materials clearly emulate world cultural principles, and so Volk und Wissen’s transition into Germany’s fiercely competitive educational publishing market offers an interesting test of the effects of educational globalisation. Reliance on the marketing expertise of Cornelsen, a Western German firm that acquired Volk und Wissen in 1991, helped the firm survive, but also retaining a ‘monist’ epistemological stance that was consistent with that of teachers trained in the socialist system.

Leading the Strategically Focused School – Success and Sustainability20061Brent Davies. Leading the Strategically Focused School – Success and Sustainability. Paul Chapman Educational Publishing, 2006. $32.95, $71.95, ISBN: 1412911915, 1412911907

Leading the Strategically Focused School – Success and Sustainability20061Brent Davies. <i>Leading the Strategically Focused School – Success and Sustainability</i>. Paul Chapman Educational Publishing, 2006. $32.95, $71.95, ISBN: 1412911915, 1412911907

Tabitha Kanogo, African Womanhood in Colonial Kenya, 1900–50. Oxford: James Currey (pb £16.95 – 0 8214 1568 9); Athens, OH: Ohio University Press (pb $24.95 – 0 8214 1568 9); Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers (price not stated), 2005, 272 pp.

Tabitha Kanogo, African Womanhood in Colonial Kenya, 1900–50. Oxford: James Currey (pb £16.95 – 0 8214 1568 9); Athens, OH: Ohio University Press (pb $24.95 – 0 8214 1568 9); Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers (price not stated), 2005, 272 pp. - Volume 76 Issue 3

Clinical Use of PDAs

Handheld computing provides the means to deliver medical information at the true point of clinical need. Realizing the potential of this emerging technology, the Taubman Medical Library at the University of Michigan sought to take a leadership role in making the clinicians in this health system more aware of the possibilities through a series of outreach efforts. A unique educational program was taught. The Library also has reformatted locally written content for download to PDAs. The educational program and publishing efforts continue.

Who Needs Books?

Books in the Digital Age . The Transformation of Academic and Higher Education Publishing in Britain and the United States. By John B. Thompson . Polity, Cambridge, 2005. 480 pp. $79.95, £65. ISBN 0-7456-3477-X. Paper, $29.95, £19.99. ISBN 0-7456-3478-8. The author explores the changes that are taking place in academic publishing and the implications these may have for the future of scholarly books.

School-Based Curriculum Development: An Interview Study of Chinese Kindergartens

This study aims to investigate how school-based curriculum development (SBCD) was interpreted and implemented in a Chinese context like Hong Kong whose educational system is highly centralized and bureaucratic. Altogether 118 teachers and 34 principals reported their beliefs and practice in SBCD, and four principals were interviewed in individual sessions. The majority of the principals and teachers admitted that they adopted one of the learning packages provided by local publishers. The dichotomies of approaches to SBCD found in Shanghai studies (Yan, S. J., Gao, J., & Jiang, Y. (2004). Theoretical framework of school-base curriculum development (in Chinese). In Shanghai Education Commission (Ed.) Developing kindergarten-based curriculum: Theoretical and practical studies. Shanghai: Shanghai Education Publishing House; Zhu, J. X. (2003). Kindergarten curriculum (in Chinese). Shanghai: East China Normal University Press) were strongly evident in Hong Kong kindergartens: the approach of ‘school-based developing of original curriculum’ and that of ‘school-based implementing of chosen curriculum’. The latter was widely used by most of the kindergartens. Implications for those who work with young children as well as those who work in teacher education programs are discussed.

The Use of Technology in Educational Publishing: Trends and Analysis

The Use of Technology in Educational Publishing: Trends and Analysis