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A decline of gender-speci®c underachievement among gifted girls can be observed. So, is this topic becoming gradually obsolete or do certain kinds of underachievement still exist? We investigated achievement and related factors among 10th-grade gifted girls in comparison to gifted boys in two separate settings: in a regular German secondary upper-level school, the Gymnasium (study 1, n=31); and in a curriculum-compressing acceleration program within the Gymnasium system (study 2, n=116). In both school settings gender differences were found to exist: in the regular setting these differences are equally distributed; in the gifted program, on the other hand, they rather favor the girls. Nevertheless, for both settings lower self-con®dence in the math self-concept can be observed among the girls. All in all, the ®ndings reported here make obvious that things actually have changed and a general convergence of boys and girls can be observed. However, it also became clear that some decisive differencesÐespecially on behavioral levelsÐstill exist.

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For intervention programs that are applied in natural settings, randomization often is difficult or impossible to achieve. If treated individuals are compared with individuals from a nonrandomized comparison group, the inference of causality can be biased. Similar distributions in the relevant characteristics of the treatment and the comparison groups cannot be expected. To adjust between-group comparisons for preexisting differences, this article proposes a simple matching procedure. This procedure involves pairing of treatment and comparison individuals based on observable characteristics, using Euclidean distance scores. Application of the proposed Euclidean-distance matching (EuM) procedure to data from the Viennese E-Lecturing (VEL) project yields satisfying results. Possible generalizations and applications of the EuM procedure are discussed.

Evaluation of teaching at universities is traditionally realized in terms of student ratings. Curriculum evaluation is rarely done in a systematic manner. More often, the emphasis is placed on a particular aspect, which is only of little help in terms of modifying education. A very prominent example is that of medical education. Here, evaluations of curricula primarily focus on new curricula by contrasting them to traditional ones. The article at hand deals with a different evaluation approach, in which five phases have to be considered and contrasting results to other teaching formats are not the main focus. In this article, the authors concentrate on the first phase (baseline evaluation) of the systematic evaluation of a medical curriculum. They describe several challenges of such an evaluation approach and illustrate the strategies used to overcome them. In addition, associated relevant empirical findings from this evaluation study are presented.

This article gives a survey of a blended learning approach called Vienna E-Lecturing (VEL), implemented in the course Research Methods and Evaluation, which is required by the psychology program at the University of Vienna, Austria. VEL replaces a main lecture and has been designed to teach methodological issues more effectively as well as to strengthen students' learning competences in this field. The program's conceptualization is based on instructional and motivational findings yielding the program's two main teaching principles: (1) networking and (2) optimal instructions. The Internet-based course lasts two semesters and is composed of 10 online learning modules and 11 face-to-face meetings (including tutorials). The modules, which are available successively via a learning platform, systematically instruct students to learn more effectively by cooperating and fulfilling different tasks within small groups. The current article describes the program's principles and theoretical background and outlines the 10 online modules. In addition, some module examples are given for illustration.

In this study we carried out a bibliometric analysis of the social sciences at three European universities (Vienna, Zurich, Oslo). The data source for this investigation was the Web of Science SSCI and publications between 2000 and 2006 were included for retrieval. Apart from the analysis of the publication output, activity and impact, networks of co-authorships, disciplines and references were explored. In general the results reveal that overall Oslo outperformed the other two universities which show similar publication activities and outputs. Using the University of Oslo as a benchmark should help to outline different strategies (research, publication and cooperation) to enhance the international visibility of the output of the University of Vienna in different fields of the social sciences. Table 1. Analyzed institutes of social sciences

Summary In this paper, conceptual and methodological problems of school program evaluation are discussed. The data were collected in conjunction with a 10 year cross-sectional/longitudinal investigation with partial inclusion of control groups. The experiences and conclusions resulting from this long-term study are revealing not only from the vantage point of the scientific evaluation of new scholastic models, but are also valuable for program evaluation studies in general, particularly in the field of gifted education.