LibQUAL Revisited: Further Analysis of Qualitative and Quantitative Survey Results at the University of Mississippi

This paper updates an earlier 2010 longitudinal study of LibQUAL qualitative and quantitative data from the University of Mississippi libraries with an additional year of LibQUAL data, collated with other library-collected data such as gate-count numbers. In doing so, it identifies several results that are not satisfactorily analyzed by LibQUAL, and it concludes that a more specialized local survey may be helpful to supplement or supplant LibQUAL.     

Introduction

This article highlights the speakers and their topics presented at the MidSouth eResource Symposium held at Mississippi State University (MSU) Libraries on August 11, 2011. The Symposium was co-sponsored by EBSCO Information Services, North American Serials Interest Group's (NASIG) Continuing Education Committee, and MSU Libraries. Burdened with flat or decreasing budgets and the need for more digital collections driven by patron preferences, libraries continue to face many challenges. This year's Symposium presentations focused on the acquisition and management of e-resources, and provided attendees with knowledge of new and emerging technologies related to electronic resources and the digital environment.     

Scaffolding cognitive and metacognitive strategy instruction in regular class lessons

The quality of teachers’ knowledge about how people learn influences students’ learning outcomes. Similarly, the quality of students’ knowledge about how they learn influences their engagement in self-regulated learning and consequently, their learning achievement. There is a gap between research findings that support these two premises and teaching–learning practices in classrooms. In this paper we describe attempts to reduce this gap. In Study 1 we surveyed early adolescent students’ cognitive and metacognitive strategy use and demonstrated that students’ cognitive and metacognitive strategy knowledge has substantial room for improvement. In Studies 2 and 3 we collaborated with teachers to embed explicit cognitive and metacognitive strategy instruction, using learning protocols, into regular class lessons. Studies 2 and 3 showed that the learning protocols slipped readily into teachers’ typical lesson designs, scaffolded teachers’ delivery of strategy instruction, and scaffolded some students’ acquisition of strategy knowledge, although progress was sometimes slow. Recommendations are presented for supporting teachers and students to engage with cognitive and metacognitive strategy instruction.     

Conceptualisations of literacy and literacy practices for children with severe learning difficulties

Literacy is traditionally narrowly conceptualised as a set of skills related to accessing and generating written or printed text. For children designated as having severe learning difficulties (SLD), who are unlikely to develop these ‘conventional’ literacy skills, such a conception implies their semi‐literacy or nonliteracy. Although conceptions of multimodal literacy and multiliteracies have rarely been applied to this group, broader understandings of literacy that include a range of activities, modes and media provide greater opportunities for including these learners in literacy practices. Drawing upon our research with teachers of this group of children and young people, we illustrate these literacy practices. We note, however, that such practices are often haphazard, not coherently thought through, and that there is much confusion regarding any distinction between communication and literacy. We argue for literacy as a specific form of communication, but conclude that broader models of literacies should be utilised to guide and support practitioners in developing interactive practice and in making reasoned and principled approaches and decisions about literacy practices, routes and progression for children with SLD.     

Allchin's Shoehorn, or Why Science is Hypothetico-Deductive

Allchin's critique of my analysis of Galileo's discovery of Jupiter's moons, and of my characterization of science as hypothetico-deductive, contains several factual and conceptual errors. Thus, contrary to his attempt to paint scientific discovery in terms of blind search and limited induction, a careful analysis of the way humans spontaneously process information and reason supports a general hypothetico-deductive theory of human information processing, reasoning, and scientific discovery.