A symposium on “speech act theory in mainstream communication research”: An introduction

The referential, sequential, and inferential dimensions of discourse are explicated and discussed in order to obtain a vantage point from which to view the contributions of speech‐act theory to our understanding of human communication processes. A preview is then provided of four papers, each of which explores the intersection of two or more of these dimensions in order to enrich our understanding of speech‐act theory.     

Research on teaching practicum – a systematic review

The aim of the present study is to conduct a systematic review research which focuses on research studies into the school practicum. In order to identify the main issues and also to provide a contemporary picture of practicum, 114 studies published on the topic are reviewed and analysed in terms of: (i) aims, (ii) main participants, (iii) methodology used and (iv) the main outcomes emerging. Many of the reviewed studies take pre-service teachers as their main participants. The review also shows that many practicum studies are relatively small-scale studies since they are mainly qualitative focused and findings derived from a relatively small sample. This suggests that more large-scale studies are needed in the field in order to provide greater insight into teaching practicum. Finally, this systematic review provides some food for thought in the area of practicum research and promotes further studies in this complex field.     

Research on peer coaching in preservice teacher education – A review of literature

This study reviewed eight studies selected from the ERIC and Education Complete databases covering the years 1997 through 2007. The goals of this study were to identify similarities and differences of peer coaching and to examine its feasibility and challenges in preservice teacher education. The four similarities among the studies identified are (i) study participants, (ii) coaching relationships, (iii) coaching duration, and (iv) coaching strategies. The differences identified were in relation to the following four areas: (i) the purposes of peer coaching, (ii) the nature of the field-based experiences of the programmes, (iii) the training for peer coaching, and (iv) the effects of peer coaching. Peer coaching appears to possess unique advantages and have much value for preservice teacher education. How barriers to the comprehensive recognition of peer coaching could be eliminated in preservice teacher education is also discussed.     

A Positive Research on Undergraduate Curriculum

The main reason for the gap between the graduates＇ capability and employment requirement lies in the lagging behind the social needs in curriculum management, specialty layout, knowledge transmission and students＇ capability training in universities. Based on the statistics of the case study, this thesis carries on a positive research on the layout of undergraduate curriculum, contents, teaching, textbooks and other problems, therefore gives some proposals on curriculum management.     

Group communication and problem‐solving effectiveness I: A critical review of inconsistent findings

A review of the existing research literature indicates that, for the most part, researchers have generally failed to identify consistent and meaningful relationships between group interaction and group performance. This has led to a growing concern among small group scholars that unless a suitable explanation can be advanced to account for such failure, it may be necessary to re‐examine the widely held assumption that group interaction plays an important role in effective group performance. This paper attempts to explain why previous research has failed to identify consistent and meaningful relationships between group interaction behaviors and group performance outcomes. In addition, it offers an alternative approach to investigating the possible relationships between group interaction and group performance.     

A Research on Learner Retention and Learning Support

Why do some of adult learners successfully accomplish their learning while the others drop out？ This has been an important question in the field of adult learning. For a long time researchers has been exploring this subject around learning barriers as well as motivations. Not until lately did some of adult and distance scholars start to pay attention to the question of why some of the adult students could successfully push through their learning process even if they are in a disadvantaged situation. Thus, Learner Retention has become one of the important themes to discuss in order to understand more about how to assist learners to persist through their learning. The main purpose of this paper is to explore how adult learners persist through their learning and factors that might have influences on them. Adult teachers and NOU students （including those who already graduated and those who dropped out） were interviewed and surveyed. Concluding from those data and content of interviews, this paper set a model that describes how adult learner retain through their learning process and some suggestions are made for better student learning support policies.     

A Review on China＇s Educational Decision-making Research

在西方,教育决策研究是企业决策研究和公共决策研究的重要分支,前者吸收了后两者的理论给养。近年来,我国教育决策研究日兴,其发展既是自身理论演进的必然,也是学校改革实践的呼唤。本文追溯了西方决策理论的来源,并对国内教育决策研究的主要观点进行了梳理与评述。     

Research on Ellipsis and Substitution—A Prototype Theory Perspective

Though ’clearly’ defined by traditional grammar,the boundary between ellipsis and substitution is actually fuzzy.The author infers that the psychological principles which govern all kinds of human behavior of categorization the concrete world also applies to their linguistic behavior.Thus,this thesis attempts to acknowledge the principle of family resemblances in its interpretation while analyzing the grammatical phenomena of ellipsis and substitution from the perspective of prototype theory.Then it concludes that substitution can be considered "entity substitution" and ellipsis can be considered "zero substitution"in the category of SUBSTITUTION,and there is a gradient continuum between them.     

Communication and aging: A study of the effects of cohort‐centrism and perceived decoding ability on communication competence and communication satisfaction

From a sample of 190 males and females (120 “young,”; 70 “old"), this study sought to determine differences in perceived levels of communication competence and communication satisfaction as a function of the main and joint effects of cohort‐centrism and perceived decoding ability. Analyses provided only weak support for the joint effects. However, older persons considered their conversational partners, whether young or old, to be more competent than did younger persons. Also, on the whole, older persons were more satisfied conversing with young persons, while younger persons were less satisfied, regardless of the age of the conversational partner. Those who perceived themselves as high decoders rated their partners as more competent than did those who perceived themselves as low decoders, and high decoders were also more satisfied with the interaction than low decoders. Cohort‐centrism was supported only in the case of low‐decoding older persons.     

Research on Information Hiding

With the development of information technology, people have paid more and more attention on the information security today. Information hiding research has become the focus of the information security research. Because every Web sites and network communication depend on the multimedia, such as audio, video, image and so on. Information hiding technology can embed secret information into a digital media source without impairing the perceptual quality of that source. Other people can＇t feel this secret information. So the secret key, the signature or the private data can transform securely in the Internet. In this paper, we mainly introduce the improving action of steganography and provide the application of the steganography in information technology.