Large Magnetoresistance and Finite-Size Effects in Electrodeposited Single-Crystal Bi Thin Films

Trigonal-axis oriented single-crystal Bi thin films have been made by electrodeposition followed by suitable annealing. Very large magnetoresistance with ratios as much as 1500 at 5 K and 2.9 at 300 K under 5 T, Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations, and finite-size effects have been observed. © 1999 The American Physical Society

Introduction to the EERJ dossier: Where is the comprehensive project in Europe today?

After the Second World War, the OECD promoted the idea – which had begun to emerge between the wars in various European countries – that the creation of a comprehensive school system, bringing together all children from age 6 to 15 or 16, was the precondition for the democratisation of society and economic progress. This model was implemented very differently from one country to another. The ideal has now ended in disenchantment. Almost everywhere, the schooling of 11 to 15-year-olds is seen as the weak link in educational systems, a site of violence and suffering for pupils and teachers. A new system is being put in place, which some call post-comprehensive. Without abandoning the concern for equality, the international organisations are foregrounding a new system of reference based on performance obligations: skills standards, international comparisons through which each country’s performance can be judged in a context of competition. The debate has moved on: the American New Right places its hopes in the market; the European texts propose several readjustments of the social-democratic compromise: an equality of performances which takes the form of the definition of key skills; an attempt at compromise between the ideal of redistribution, the imperatives of performance and the creation of a collective consciousness in pluriethnic and pluricultural societies which takes the form of the idea of inclusive societies. The comprehensive school and the debates surrounding it are liable to be overtaken before being analysed. A retrospective analysis seems necessary to do justice to the efforts that have been made. The way societies organise their educational system is a key element in the production and transformation of the social. This special double issue of the European Educational Research Journal examines the current state of the comprehensive model in Europe and formulates the hypothesis of a post-comprehensive era; in so doing, it addresses the fundamental problem area of the relationship between education and society(ies). It was this aim of retrospective analysis that inspired the organisation, at the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) in Porto in 2014, of a symposium on “The emergence of a post-comprehensive school in Europe? The role of social science journals in constructing a reflexive and critical analysis”. This was followed by a call for contributions for this EERJ dossier, “Re-examining the comprehensive school project in Europe.” The aim of that invitation and of this ensuing double issue is to offer a European perspective on the question of the comprehensive school. There were 21 responses to the call; ten articles were selected after review. Together they provide a wide-ranging view of the situation

Evaluation Systems in a Crowded Policy Space : Implications for Local School Governance

Evaluation systems of various types are an integral part of a country’s education policy space, within which they are supposed to have the basic functions of enhancing accountability and supporting school development. Here we argue that in a crowded policy space evaluation systems may interfere with each other in a way that can have unintended consequences and create new ‘policies by the way’ that are not the result of intentional policy decisions. To shed light on this argument, we examine five of approximately 30 evaluation systems operating in the Swedish education system. Our analysis examines a situation in which many evaluation systems are doing almost the same thing, i.e. collecting a similar and limited set of quantitative data, and addressing the same local governance actors with the primary goal of supporting school development in the same direction. By doing so, these evaluation systems could thus give rise to several unintended consequences, including a scaling down of the school law and curriculum, multiple accountability problems, increased administration and new intermediary job functions at the level of local education governance.Konsekvenser av utvärdering för grundskolans prakti