THE LEARNING AND RETENTION OF TEACHING SKILLS BY OLDER ADULTS: A TIME SERIES ANALYSIS

Comparative analysis of time series data (T1 = preprogram; T2 = postpro‐gram; T3 = 6‐month followup) collected for the first year class of an older adult teacher training program (N = 35; mean age = 69.1 years) documents that the elderly learn and retain materials learned at different rates. Variables such as age, sex, teaching experience, education, and race/ethnicity all potentially play a role in differentiating the learning process. Evaluation results further confirm that the initial acquisition of leadership skills by older adults is no guarantee that those skills will be maintained successfully over time. There may also be a false sense of confidence in some older learners that is gained simply by their having successfully completed an organized course of training. Study findings lead to recommendations emphasizing the importance of promoting resilient skills capacity in the teaching domain by older adults by means of a variety of skills‐preservation program techniques inlcuding the provision of educational seminars, “retooling” sessions, and reunion programs subsequent to the offering of the initial teacher training program.     

Does calibration reduce variability in the assessment of accounting learning outcomes?

Reliable, consistent assessment process that produces comparable assessment grades between assessors and institutions is a core activity and an ongoing challenge with which universities have failed to come to terms. In this paper, we report results from an experiment that tests the impact of an intervention designed to reduce grader variability and develop a shared understanding of national threshold learning standards by a cohort of reviewers. The intervention involved consensus moderation of samples of accounting students’ work, with a focus on three research questions. First, what is the quantifiable difference in grader variability on the assessment of learning outcomes in ‘application skills’ and ‘judgement’? Second, does participation in the workshops lead to reduced disparity in the assessment of the students’ learning outcomes in ‘application skills’ and ‘judgement’? Third, does participation in the workshops lead to greater confidence by reviewers in their ability to assess students’ skills in application skills and judgement? Our findings suggest consensus moderation does reduce variability across graders and also builds grader confidence.     

Lipid peroxidation and antioxidant vitamins in urolithasis

The present, study was conducted to determine the level of malondialdehyde (MDA) as an index of free radial induced lipid peroxidation and antioxidant vitamins-vitamins A, vitamin C and vitamin E in 75 confirmed cases of urolithiasis. Significantly high level of MDA (p<0.001) with significantly low levels of vitamin E (p<0.001) and vitamin A (p<0.001) with no significant decrease in vitamin C (p>0.05) were observed in the plasma of urolithiasis cases as compared to normal controls. In conclusion, it appears that a role of lipid peroxidation and oxidative function exists in the pathogenesis of urolithiasis. But, the exact mechanism how this occurs remains to be elucidated.     

Teacher Ideology and Sex Roles in Curriculum Texts

This paper explores the relationship between teachers’ general beliefs about sexism in society with their views on sexism in curriculum materials. In so doing, it seeks to elaborate on the nature of teachers’ ideological perceptions of sexism, sex roles and feminism. By analysing sex stereotyping in the school texts of one secondary school for the subjects English, mathematics and French, the research reported in the paper substantiates much of the previous research in this area which has found school texts to be male dominated. In conclusion, the paper suggests that, in certain cases, teacher ideology could be a considerable obstacle to the development of anti‐sexist pedagogies because those teachers who support traditional sex roles tend to resist or devalue anti‐sexist initiatives in education.     

An overhead reduction technique for mega-state compression schemes

Many of the most effective compression methods involve complicated models. Unfortunately, as model complexity increases, so does the cost of storing the model itself. This paper examines a method to reduce the amount of storage needed to represent a Markov model with an extended alphabet, by applying a clustering scheme that brings together similar states. Experiments run on a variety of large natural language texts show that much of the overhead of storing the model can be saved at the cost of a very small loss of compression efficiency.     

Measures of international collaboration in scientific literature: Part II

This paper continues the attempt of Part I to develop a coherent family of measures of influence between classes of documents, for example, language or nationality classes, as indicated by citation choice. In this paper we focus on situations in which there is some ambiguity as to how to assign items to a class. For simplicity, we change our focus from citations to co-authorship patterns, restricting most of our discussion to papers with two authors. Like the earlier paper, we propose very simple models of the citation decision, and base our measures on the parameters that appear in the model.     

Interference of anti-T4 autoantibodies in the single step free T4 radioimmunoassays

The thyroid hormone profile of a hypothyroid patient, with moderate sized diffuse goiter and history of exogenous thyroid hormone therapy, was found to be highly ambiguous. The total as well as free T4 levels were consistently high (out of range) with suppressed T3 (total and free) and elevated thyrotropin levels. We incubated the serum with the radio-iodine labelled T4 and observed that the patient’s serum bound about 50.5% of the total radioactivity resulting in 85.3% interference in the radioimmunoassay. On resolving the serum proteins by cellulose acetate electrophoresis, the radioactivity was detected in the gamma globulin band. The protein profile showed mildly raised levels of IgG. Therefore it was established that the patient’s serum carried T4 reactive antibodies (IgG) which were interfering in the immunoassays. Elevated anti-thyroid microsomal antibodies were also present in the patient’s serum. The anti-T4 antibodies were highly specific for T4 and did not show any cross reactivity with the T3 or its analogues used in the estimation of free T3. We stripped the serum by precipitating the immunoglobulins and were successful in estimating the levels of free T4 in the stripped serum by single step radioimmunoassy.