Positive but also negative effects of ethnic diversity in schools on educational performance? An empirical test using cross-national PISA data.

In this inaugural lecture, I will estimate the effects on language skills of two characteristics of school populations: average/share and diversity, both on the ethnic and the sociocultural dimension. I will use the cross-national PISA 206 data, for both 15-year-old native pupils and pupils with an immigrant background. A larger ethnic diversity of schools in secondary education hampers the educational performance of both pupils with an immigrant background and native pupils, but the negative effects are smaller in education systems with little stratification and strongest in highly stratified education systems. The sociocultural diversity of schools does not have an effect on educational performance, but these effects are positive in highly stratified educational systems and negative in hardly stratified systems. However, the average parental educational level of schools is very important for the educational performance of children, and this hardly differs between education systems. A higher share of pupils with an immigrant background in a school hampers educational performance, but if these pupils have the same regional origin (Islamic countries; non-Islamic Asian countries), a higher share of pupils with an immigrant background at that school promotes educational performance. Pupils originating from Islamic countries have substantially lower language scores than equivalent pupils with an immigrant background from other regions. This cannot be explained by the individual socioeconomic backgrounds, school characteristics, or education systems.immigration; educational performance; country of origin; ethnic school diversity; social-economic school diversity; ethnic and social-economic share/average of schools; educational systems

A distance on curves modulo rigid transformations

We propose a geometric method for quantifying the difference between parametrized curves in Euclidean space by introducing a distance function on the space of parametrized curves up to rigid transformations (rotations and translations). Given two curves, the distance between them is defined as the infimum of an energy functional which, roughly speaking, measures the extent to which the jet field of the first curve needs to be rotated to match up with the jet field of the second curve. We show that this energy functional attains a global minimum on the appropriate function space, and we derive a set of first-order ODEs for the minimizer.Comment: 22 pages, 1 figure; final version as published with minor typos correcte

Human Resource Function Competencies in European Companies

This paper presents an overview of recent empirical research on human resource competencies in Europe. The data were collected in 2002 in the global Human Resource Competence Study, an initiative of the University of Michigan. The results suggest that personal credibility and HR delivery have a positive effect on the relative ranking of the HR function and its professionals. According to non-HRM respondents strategic contribution is the competency that will lead to financial competitiveness, while HR managers consider business knowledge to be crucial for added value of the HR function

Transition to turbulence in laminar hypersonic flow

Progress in a recently started project aimed at the prediction of transition to turbulence in hypersonic flow is briefly discussed. The prediction of transition to turbulence is a very important issue in the design of space vessels. Two space vehicles currently under investigation, namely the aeroassisted transfer vehicle (AOTV) and the trans-atmospheric vehicle (TAV), suffer from strong aerodynamic heating. This heating is strongly influenced by the boundary layer structure. These aerospace vehicles fly in the upper atmospheric layer at a Mach number between 10 and 30 at very low atmospheric pressures. At very high altitudes the flow is laminar, but when the space vessel returns to a lower orbit, the flow becomes turbulent and the heating is dramatically increased. The prediction of this transition process is commonly done by means of experiments. The experimental facilities available nowadays cannot model the hypersonic flow field accurately enough by limitations in Mach and Reynolds number. These facilities also have a large free stream disturbance level which makes it very difficult to investigate transition accurately. An alternative approach is to study transition by theoretical means. Up to now numerical studies of hypersonic flow only discussed steady laminar or turbulent flow. This theoretical approach is extended to the study of transition in hypersonic flow by means of direct numerical simulations and additional theoretical investigations to explain the mechanisms leading to transition. A brief outline of how this research is to be performed is given

Separated unity: the East and West German industrial sector in 1936

This paper compares and analyses the East and West German levels of labour productivity in industries in 1936. For this purpose archive-data on the industrial census of 1936 were used. In comparison with earlier studies, which rely directly or indirectly on the official publication of the census, these archive data have the advantage of not being distorted by aggregations for military-strategic reasons. Furthermore a statistical division of what later became East and West Berlin could be made. The present paper confirms the conclusions on the relative productivity in earlier research: in 1936 East Germany realised a lower productivity level in the industrial sector than West Germany. The differences are primarily explained by structural differences due to specialisation resulting in a relatively large "Basic and Fabricated Metal" branch in West Germany and a large branch "Textiles and Wearing Apparel" in East Germany. Furthermore this paper signals a higher aggregate capital intensity in West Germany, which is related to the large share of mining industries. Furthermore the East German level of education was below that of West Germany . Finally institutional differences are likely to have played a role since the major industrial agglomerations of East and West Germany were part of two different "industrial orders".

The Role of Corporate HR Functions In Multinational Corporations: The Interplay Between Corporate, Regional/National And Plant Level

The HR literature has been abundant in providing typologies of the roles of HR professionals in their organisation. These typologies are largely related to the changing nature of HRM over time, and the context in which empirical work was carried out. In this paper we focus on the context of the increasing internationalisation of firms and how this has an effect upon modern-day typologies of HR roles. We explore these roles by focusing on the way in which HRM practices come about. Especially in a MNC setting of increasing internationalisation of firms the issues of coordination, shared learning and standardisation versus leeway for adapting to the local context (customisation) are prominent. These issues present themselves both at the corporate and regional level and at the national and local (plant) level. On all these levels HR practitioners are active and find themselves amidst the interplay of both (de-)centralisation and standardisation versus customisation processes. This paper thus explores the way in which HR practices come into being and how they are implemented and coordinated. These insights help us understand further the roles of international corporate HR functions that are being identified. Our data is based on 65 interviews, which were held (as part of larger study of HR-function excellence) with HR managers, line managers and senior executives of six multinational companies in eight countries from September to December 2004. This data reveals new classifications of processes by which HR activities are developed, implemented and coordinated, both in terms of who is involved and how these processes are carried out

Conceptualizing school effectiveness

The theoretical status of existing school effectiveness models is analyzed by using perspectives from organizational theory and models of classroom effectiveness. This leads to the formulation of a basic framework for conceptualizing school effectiveness that includes variables at the levels of the school, the context of the school and the classroom, while background variables of pupils are also taken into account. One of the conclusions is that hypothesis construction and empirical research on cross-level relationships within this basic framework are of central importance to enhance our understanding of school effectiveness