An analysis of reform in administrative system of Chinese higher education

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the administrative system of higher education then was characterized as “centralized”, “Tiao and Kuai” were segmented (some higher education institutions were directly administered by provincial governments, and some were affiliated to the relative administrative departments of the state) and higher education institutions (HEIs) were government-run. The reform in the administrative system of higher education launched in the 1980s broke down the segmentation of “Tiao and Kuai”, and changed it into a new administrative system emphasizing the role of the provincial governments (“Kuai-oriented mode”). Thus, HEIs gained more autonomy and tremendous changes have taken place in the relation between HEIs and the government. However, weakening the government’s administrative control over HEIs and readjusting government-HEIs relations are still the main concerns in reforming the administrative system of Chinese higher education. __________ Translated from Journal of Nanjing Normal University (Social Science), 2005 (4)     

广西能源消费二氧化碳排放测算与影响因素分析

利用IPCC提出的碳排放折算系数测算广西能源消费CO2排放,运用卡亚公式和完全分解模型分析人口规模、人均GDP、能源强度和CO2密度对广西能源消费CO2排放量变化的影响,结果发现:在1995²011年,对广西能源消费CO2排放量增大起正作用的依次是人均GDP和人口规模,起负作用的依次是能源强度和CO2密度。因此减小广西能源消费CO2排放量,要控制人口规模、改善产业结构、能源结构和推动节能减排技术发展。     

基于灰色关联分析的唐山市碳排放驱动因素研究

将煤炭、焦炭、汽油、煤油、柴油、燃料油、液化石油气、天然气8类能源作为主要的指标,对唐山市1995-2014年能源消费和碳排放状况进行了研究,并在此基础上,采用灰色关联分析法测算了唐山市碳排放量与人口总数、城镇化率、经济增长、产业结构、能源强度、能源结构6个影响因素间的关联度,然后根据实证分析结果,从倡导低碳生活、推进新型城镇化、优化产业结构、发展低碳技术、调整能源结构方面提出了唐山市降低碳排放的对策建议。     

Self-presentation bias in surveys of teachers’ educational technology practices

This study investigated self-presentation bias in the self-reports of teachers about their practices in six topic areas in educational technology (Instructional Design, Assessment, Learner-Centered Instruction, Curriculum Alignment, Attitudes about Computers, and Use of Computers with Students). Subjects were 50 middle-school teachers. Data were collected using a 30-item Likert-type survey containing five items per topic area. Teachers responded to items in two forms: “what I do” and “what other teachers do.” Significant differences favoring the “I” form were obtained in three of the six areas (Instructional Design, Learner-Centered Instruction, and Curriculum Alignment) and on nine of the 30 items, indicating a rather strong self-presentation bias. Responses were generally positive across both forms. Results are discussed with implications for working with teachers and for using additional assessment measures that complement teacher self-reports.     

Types and Qualities of Knowledge and their Relations to Problem Solving in Physics

Based on empirical findings and theoretical considerations related to the field of expertise research, the importance of “types” and “qualities” of knowledge in relation to problem solving in physics was investigated. The students (N =138) in this study had a level of competence that corresponds to an intensive beginner college course in physics. It was found that conceptual declarative knowledge and problem scheme knowledge are excellent predictors of problem solving performance. However, a detailed analysis shows that the first knowledge type is more typical for low achievers (novices) in physics problem solving whereas the second type is predominately used by high achievers (experts). Regarding types and qualities of knowledge and their relations to problem solving, the results of a multidimensional scaling analysis (MDS) indicate that two dimensions of knowledge can be distinguished. On the extreme limits of the first dimension, which could be named “problem solving relevance vs. structure of discipline”, are the types of knowledge and the qualities of knowledge, respectively. The second dimension of knowledge could be named “single knowledge elements vs. organised knowledge units”. There are types of knowledge as well as qualities of knowledge distributed along this dimension. Consequences of these results for improving physics education are discussed.     

Students’ Persistence in a Distributed Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership in Higher Education: A Mixed Methods Study

The purpose of this mixed methods sequential explanatory study was to identify factors contributing to students’ persistence in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Distributed Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership in Higher Education by obtaining quantitative results from surveying 278 current and former students and then following up with four purposefully selected typical respondents to explore those results in more depth. In the first, quantitative, phase, five external and internal to the program factors were found to be predictors to students’ persistence in the program: “program”, “online learning environment”, “student support services”, “faculty”, and “self-motivation”. In the qualitative follow up multiple case study analysis four major themes emerged: (1) quality of academic experiences; (2) online learning environment; (3) support and assistance; and (4) student self-motivation. The quantitative and qualitative findings from the two phases of the study are discussed with reference to prior research. Implications and recommendations for policy makers are provided.     

Communications programs in higher education: Objectives and curricula

Conclusion This report has shown that there are areas of commonality and areas of diversity in existing communications programs in higher education. The undergraduate and graduate curricular structure reflects, for the most part, the stated objectives of the program. Several questions remain to be answered: “What is being accomplished under the communications label that could not otherwise be accomplished?” “What are some of the emerging trends in this rapidly growing field?” These topics will be covered in subsequent articles. This is the second in a series of articles on communications programs in higher education by the author who is director of the audiovisual center at Syracuse University. The first article, “Communications Programs in Higher Education,” appeared inAV Communication Review, Winter 1960.     

Comment on Perry & Winne’s “Learning from Learning Kits: gStudy Traces of Students’ Self-Regulated Engagements with Computerized Content”

The comment starts with a review of the authors’ four phase model of SRL as metacognitive, motivated, and strategic where it is suggested to complete the model with aspects of motivation, emotion, and attribution. Furthermore, integrating theories about “online motivation” within the model’s internal regulatory part and framing it with elements of interest theory could increase the explanatory power in view of the dynamics in the regulatory component. The authors’ critics of methodological shortcomings and their preference of “in vivo” indicators about learners’ tactics is acknowledged although their meaning of “validity” needs further elaboration, especially with regard to a precise definition of adequate parameters that depict significant characteristics of traces and of time-related changes. With respect to the Learning Kit Project, a parallel on-line measure of concurrent motivational and emotional states is suggested as well as an emphasis on regulatory aspects having their source in dynamic interactions between cognition, motivation, and emotion. Regarding the accompanying software, considering the difference in perspectives, roles, and needs of teachers and researchers and to integrate project and software into a more explicit instructional concept could help to realize its promising and challenging target even more efficiently.     

Comparing efficiency in a cross-country perspective: the case of Italian and Spanish state universities

The growing internationalization of European Higher Education requires more emphasis on cross-country comparisons. In this paper, an efficiency analysis of Italian and Spanish universities is conducted; as well as from a comparative perspective. The efficiency scores are obtained using data envelopment analysis. The results demonstrate a good average efficiency in both countries relative to each “country-specific” frontier; but when compared together, Italian universities seem relatively more efficient. Malmquist indexes show, in both cases, efficiency improvements in the period considered. In the Italian case, this improvement is due to major “technological changes”; that is, the introduction of some structural reforms in the sector (e.g., Bachelor/Master curricula). In the Spanish case, there is an improvement in “pure” efficiency, which is due to new funding models. Further stages of the study underline the role of “regional effects”, probably due to different socio-economic conditions in Italy, and to the decentralization process in Spain.     

产业结构变迁、城市化进程与碳排放——基于STIRPAT模型

基于STIRPAT模型,运用面板回归方法,定量分析东部10省市的产业结构、城市化水平与二氧化碳排放之间的关系。结果表明:不同行业对二氧化碳排放的影响差异显著,其中石油石化类行业对二氧化碳排放的促进作用最明显,而金融业对二氧化碳排放略有降低作用;城市化率提高会促进二氧化碳排放。为尽快形成低能耗、低污染的绿色发展模式,地方政府需要发挥产业政策的引导作用,推广节能减排技术,控制二氧化碳排放量。     

On the development of postdoctoral education in China

Having experienced three stages of “preliminary establishment”, “rapid and comprehensive development” and “steady development” for twenty years, China's postdoctoral system is moving towards a new one, the stage of “quality improvement and innovation development.” Remarkable achievements in the system include cultivating talented personnel, promoting the construction and development of disciplines, integrating production, learning and research, as well as scientific research achievements. However, some problems still exist in its managerial system, the science funds subsidized as well as the relationship between the mobile station and the workstation. Based on the above analysis, the author suggests that the postdoctoral system in the new era should be innovative in its systems of management, cultivation, funds collection, subvention and evaluation.     

Collaboration, scaffolding and the promotion of problem solving strategies in Mexican pre-schoolers

Research in Mexican schools, drawing upon earlier research in the UK, has led to the development and use of a method for describing, comparing and evaluating the particular approaches and interactional strategies used by teachers and learners. Using this method, qualitative and quantitative comparisons are made to distinguish between teachers who use a conventional, formal, directive approach when teaching 5-year-old children mathematical skills (called the “Official” method) and those who use a more interactive, collaborative, supportive, “scaffolded” approach to teach similar classes of children (called the “High Scope” method). In an earlier study, we found more competent and independent problem-solving among High/Scope pupils than among their peers taught by the Official method. In the present study, discourse analysis and statistical analysis of the relative frequencies of types of teacher-pupil interaction in the classrooms of two “Official” teachers and two “High’ Scope” teachers are used to explain the improved problem-solving of the “High Scope” pupils. The findings support the view that by creating a more collaborative, scaffolded version of classroom education, teachers can more successfully enable children to develop their own problem-solving skills, learning strategies and curriculum-related understanding. The research also contributes to the development and implementation of methods for promoting a more effective style of teacher-learner interaction in the classroom.     

The role of the content and structure of curriculum material in cognition

Summary and Conclusion What has been reported here is an objective, pre-trial formative evaluation of the core of an ASEP unit designed to show its potential in terms of themes and structure, a revision on the basis cognitive-field learning theory of those sections of the core shown by the analysis to be possibly deficient, and an ongoing field-trial of the original and revised cores. The field-trial results, though only tentative, have demonstrated the use of the Carss (1973) content analysis technique as it may be applied to formative curriculum evaluation since it supplies “... the diagnostic analysis which is at the heart of formative evaluation” (Baumgart; 1972:9). The technique produces, prior to field-trials, usable information with respect to the potential inherant in the text, showing for example where structure is poor or where there is irrelevant or too much information. The technique also allows feedback from field-trials to be used more constructively since general statements or questions, hitherto of little use in giving writers directions for revision, can be linked to themes, the content and distribution of which are available. The use of this technique for the analysis of the manifest content of communication-written or verbal—seems unlimited. The analysis of the teacher and pupils verbal communications in parallel with the textual analysis, and the analysis of “expert” ideas on “what is science?” to obtain the “essence” of science are but two. The technique itself needs further refinement and this refinement and possible uses offer an interesting challenge for future research.     

A Quality Math Curriculum in Support of Effective Teaching For Elementary Schools

This paper presents a curriculum, textbook and test result analysis for the new (to California) elementary school “Key Standard” mathematics curriculum, transplanted in 1998 from it's foreign roots in Asia and Europe, locations with far different cultural and economic backgrounds. Based on topic analysis methods developed by Michigan State University, this curriculum is a “quality” curriculum, since it is closely aligned with the curriculum of the six leading TIMSS math countries. Five-year test results are presented for two cohorts totaling over 13,000 students, all from four “early adoption” urban districts where 68% of the students were economically disadvantaged. Included are two cohorts of English learning immigrants totaling over 4,400 students. Performance was found to be statistically superior to similar (control) districts which continued with the old 1991 curriculum and textbooks (0.003 < p < 0.015). The focus of this paper is on the transition from far-below to above average learning performance of these students over the 1998–2002 period.     

The “System of Chymists” and the “Newtonian dream” in Greek-speaking Communities in the 17th–18th Centuries

The acceptance of new chemical ideas, before the Chemical Revolution of Lavoisier, in Greek-speaking communities in the 17th and 18th centuries did not create a discourse of chemical philosophy, as it did in Europe, but rather a “philosophy” of chemistry as it was formed through the evolution of didactic traditions of Chemistry. This “philosophical” chemistry was not based on the existence of any academic institutions, it was focused on the ontology of principles and forces governing the analysis/synthesis of matter and formulated two didactic traditions. The one, named “the system of chymists”, close to the Boylean/Cartesian tradition, accepted, contrary to Aristotelianism, the five “chymical” principles and also the analytical ideal, but the “chymical” principles were not under a conceptual and experimental investigation, as they were in Europe. Also, a crucial issue for this tradition remained the “mechanical” principles which were under the influence of the metaphysical nature of the Aristotelian principles. The other, close to the Boylean/Newtonian tradition, was the integrated presentation of the Newtonian “dream”, which maintained a discursive attitude with reference to the “chemical attractions”–“chemical affinities” and actualised the mathematical atomism of Boscovich, according to which the elementary texture of matter could be causally explained within this complex architecture of mathematical “punkta”. In this tradition also coexisted, in a discursive synthesis, the “chemical element” of Lavoisier and the arguments of the new theory and its opposition to the phlogiston theory, but the “chemical affinities” were under the realm of the “physical element” as “metaphysical point”.     

Unequal Forced-Intra-Refresh for robust video streaming

INTRODUCTION In the encoding or transcoding of video stream- ing, intra refresh is introduced as a non-normative error-resilience tool. Although the intra-refresh schemes based on the rate-distortion optimization (C?té et al., 2000; Stockhammer et al., 2002) are superior to the early heuristic intra-refresh strategies, these new schemes cannot yet accurately estimate the video distortion due to time-varying packet losses, and usually ignore the inter-frame error-propagation effect. Chiou…     

Look who’s talking: Emergent evidence for discriminating between differences in listserv participation

This paper reports findings from a study of LookJed, the oldest and largest on-line forum for Computer Mediated Discussion among individuals interested in Jewish education. The study adopted a “cyber-ethnographic” approach, with postings to the forum seen as “acts of communication” that reveal what is important to their authors. An interest in exploring similarities between forum conversations and those in teachers’ lounges led to an investigation of Herring’s claim that most listservs do not include discussion at all, only the trading of information. This investigation found that active forum participants generally use the forum for discrete purposes, most commonly to exchange information about “subject matter” or “teaching material”, less commonly to exchange opinions and ideas, and rarely to do both. Integrating an analysis of patterns of contribution with an examination of their discursive content reveals six preeminent “types” among the population of contributors, each of whom participates in the forum in different ways and acts with different purposes. Although this typology is at best suggestive and needs to be tested against other listserv cases, its easy identification suggests that in order to better understand the cultures of virtual forums, it is important to pursue a more variegated characterization of listserv participants and their motivations than has typically been the case in CMD research where users are most frequently identified as either lurkers or fanatics, or as active or passive participants.     

The art of being fully in the present with young children

The different ways caregivers engage themselves with toddlers can transform daily interactions, for it is the quality of these innumerable experiences that form the basis of the very young child's “curriculum.” The authors discovered that “being fully in the present” has many benefits and rewards. They became more mindful and reflective using this technique, and their sensitivity toward caring for children grew.     

An Experiment in Teaching Ratio and Proportion

This paper summarizes our analysis of the complexity of ratio problems at Grades 6 and 7, and reports a two-year experiment related to the teaching and learning of rational numbers and proportionality in these grades. Two classes were followed and observed. Part of the teaching material was common to both classes, mainly the objectives and the corpus of ratio problems in a physical context. But in one class, here called “Partial-experiment”, the learning environment was exclusively a paper-pencil one and the teacher followed his usual method in designing and conducting teaching sequences. In the other class, here called “Full-experiment”, the teaching was based on a framework, emerging from our analysis of complexity of ratio problems, involving precise guidelines and a specific computer environment. Using a pre-test and a post-test, we observed clear progress in both classes compared to a sample of “standard” pupils. Our comparative pupil-oriented study indicates more complete improvement in the “full-experiment” class, i.e., a better acquisition of fractions and their use for solving usual proportionality problems. The average pupil’s progress is greater in the “full experiment”, with the pupils who were initially high- or low-level attainers benefiting the most from the “full-experiment”.     

Procedural and conceptual changes in young children’s problem solving

This study analysed the different types of arithmetic knowledge that young children utilise when solving a multiple-step addition task. The focus of the research was on the procedural and conceptual changes that occur as children develop their overall problem solving approach. Combining qualitative case study with a micro-genetic approach, clinical interviews were conducted with ten 5–6-year-old children. The aim was to document how children combine knowledge of addition facts, calculation procedures and arithmetic concepts when solving a multiple-step task and how children’s application of different types of knowledge and overall solving approach changes and develops when children engage with solving the task in a series of problem solving sessions. The study documents children’s pathways towards developing a more effective and systematic approach to multiple-step tasks through different phases of their problem solving behaviour. The analysis of changes in children’s overt behaviour reveals a dynamic interplay between children’s developing representation of the task, their improved procedures and gradually their more explicit grasp of the conceptual aspects of their strategy. The findings provide new evidence that supports aspects of the “iterative model” hypothesis of the interaction between procedural and conceptual knowledge and highlight the need for educational approaches and tasks that encourage and trigger the interplay of different types of knowledge in young children’s arithmetic problem solving.