Publication Type: Session Presentation
Abstract: Do you want to broaden your students’ learning experiences, encourage them to make meaningful connections, and promote world languages at your school? This session (1) explores topics that facilitate cross-curricular teaching, (2) presents video evidence of successful lessons, and (3) reveals time-saving ways of collaborating with other teachers at your school.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: There is an increasing demand for direct measures of skill and for these to be cross national. Major international survey programmes such as the Programme for International Student Achievement, the International Adult Literacy Survey and its successors aim to provide comparative data on skill levels such as literacy or reading across countries. The surveys of adults bring together traditional educational testing methods, more normally associated with school based tests, with household survey methods. Following a standard interview on demographic and reading related behaviour the respondent is asked to complete an assessment booklet. Although the assessment is not conducted in an exam type setting and does not have a set time limit it does depart from the types of activities normally conducted as part of a household survey. The average completion time of the assessment is one hour.

Following the first round of the International Adult Literacy Survey in 1994 the results for France were withdrawn from the study. As part of a methodological review commissioned by the European Commission and conducted by a consortium led by the Office for National Statistics in the UK, respondent motivation was investigated in three countries, the UK, France and Sweden. Sweden had performed particularly well in the IALS while France performed poorly. Some IALS respondents across the range of ability in each country were reinterviewed and asked to redo the assessment and some new respondents were recruited to take part in the study. Following the assessment indepth interviews were conducted about the approach to the assessment tasks, their perceptions of what the survey was about, their reaction to the assessment, their views on particular types of items such as calculations among other topics.

This paper presents the findings from this research which showed differences in approach and understanding across countries.

Publication Type: Session Presentation
Abstract: Teaching across the curriculum? Emphasizing multiple intelligences? You can do it all in this German geography unit! The unit makes use of mathematics, music, reading, and writing while addressing the Foreign Languages Standards. The unit can be adapted for use with any language.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: By definition, the Leader of the Opposition has a bad job. Whereas the British media have been accused of exercising power without responsibility, he or she only has responsibility without power, occupying a job which is essentially defined by what it is not.

All Leaders of the Opposition aspire, and certainly ought to aspire, to occupy the very different position of Prime Minister. The latter role has been subject to much more academic scrutiny than that of Leader of the Opposition, although it is only recently that Peter Hennessy has suggested a Prime Ministerial job description or that Kevin Theakston has explored what makes for Prime Ministerial effectiveness.

What makes for Oppositional effectiveness, certainly on recent experience, seems even more elusive. This paper sets out to establish the functions of the Leader of the Opposition and offer some means for assessing the effectiveness with which these these are discharged. It also draws attention to the hitherto neglected significance of considering the role of opposition within contemporary debates about political participation and engagement.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: Free access to the media for contenders can play a critical role in determining political outcomes, as was amply demonstrated by the Chilean opposition during the 1988 plebiscite on military rule. Although the policy literature has embraced free access to the electronic media as a panacea, there is still no argument concerning where we would expect to see such measures enacted. In this paper we present two alternative theoretical approaches to address this issue, and test seven specific hypotheses explaining the presence of free media access for political parties in both developed and developing nations. We find that free media access is not related to a country’s level of democracy, wealth, structure of media ownership, or type of executive system (presidential / parliamentary). In contrast, free media is systematically more likely to be found in largely populated countries and those with PR/mixed electoral systems.