Bullying and victimisation rates among students in general and special education: a comparative analysis

Bullying and victimisation remains a pervasive problem within the nation’s schools. International research has indicated that students who are enrolled in special education curricula are victimised and perpetrate more bullying than their general education peers. Few empirical studies have examined bullying and victimisation rates among American schoolchildren within special education programmes. The current study examined rates of bullying and fighting perpetration and victimisation among middle‐school students (n = 7331) and high‐school students (n = 14,315) enrolled in general education and special education programmes. As hypothesised, students in special education reported greater rates of bullying and fighting perpetration, and victimisation than general education students. Students who were in self‐contained classrooms reported more perpetration and victimisation than those in inclusive settings. Fighting perpetration was similar for younger and older students in special education settings, whereas fighting perpetration was lower for older students, versus younger students, in general education.     

Motivators and Inhibitors for University Faculty in Distance and e-learning

This article reports on four United States studies of how rewards systems, extrinsic and intrinsic, could play an important role in providing incentives for university faculty to teach (or remain teaching) electronic and distance education courses. The first three studies conducted prior to 2003 reported faculty were inherently motivated to teach e-learning and distance education. The fourth study in 2003 reported key findings that differed from the earlier studies. Using a principal components analysis, the researchers found nine indicators of motivation to participate or not participate in electronic or distance education. The implications from the fourth study indicated that, while faculty members were inherently committed to helping students, faculty members wanted their basic physiological needs met by university administration through extrinsic motivators, such as salary increases and course releases.     

Beyond relevance and recall: testing new user‐centred measures of database performance

Background: Measures of the effectiveness of databases have traditionally focused on recall, precision, with some debate on how relevance can be assessed, and by whom. New measures of database performance are required when users are familiar with search engines, and expect full text availability. Objectives: This research ascertained which of four bibliographic databases (bni, cinahl, medline and embase ) could be considered most useful to nursing and midwifery students searching for information for an undergraduate dissertation. Methods: Searches on title were performed for dissertation topics supplied by nursing students (n = 9), who made the relevance judgements. Measures of recall and precision were combined with additional factors to provide measures of effectiveness, while efficiency combined measures of novelty and originality and accessibility combined measures for availability and retrievability, based on obtainability. Results: There were significant differences among the databases in precision, originality and availability, but other differences were not significant (Friedman test). Odds ratio tests indicated that bni , followed by cinahl were the most effective, cinahl the most efficient, and bni the most accessible. Conclusions: The methodology could help library services in purchase decisions as the measure for accessibility, and odds ratio testing helped to differentiate database performance.     

资源集合/个体资源元数据关系描述及实现

只要是涉及资源集合搜索,现代检索系统一般都忽略了资源集合元数据的问题。而要揭示资源集合层次的信息,一种可选的方法是通过获得资源集合级和文献单元级的元数据,从而深刻理解它们之间的关系。介绍一个对资源集合与文献单元元数据关系提供分类逻辑框架的开发项目。这个逻辑构架支持：元数据规范的开发者定义元数据元素;元数据创建者描述对象;系统设计者实现应用系统的开发,该系统能够充分利用资源集合级元数据所带来的好处。介绍资源集合与文献单元元数据之间存在的三类关系实例：“属性/值传递”、“值传递”和“值约束”,表明即便是对于这些简单的例子,一个精确的公式除了要符合一阶谓词逻辑之外,还需要引入模态概念。这些公式也属于近期信息检索和本体评价方面的研究成果。     

Creating a Program to Deepen Family Inquiry at Interactive Science Exhibits

Abstract A common goal of science museums is to support the public in science inquiry by engaging groups of visitors with interactive exhibits. This article summarizes the efforts of a team of researchers and practitioners to extend and deepen such inquiry by explicitly coaching families in the skills of scientific inquiry at interactive exhibits. The first phase of the project, reported here, involved designing a “best case” program that worked for small groups of casual visitors under ideal circumstances, facilitated by an experienced educator in a quiet laboratory near the public floor. The final program, called Inquiry Games, taught visitors to sandwich their spontaneous physical experimentation between two additional phases: asking a question to drive their investigation at the beginning; and interpreting the results of their investigation at the end. Provisional evaluation data suggest that the Inquiry Games improved visitors' inquiry behavior in several ways and was rated as very enjoyable by them. Encouraged by these indicators, we suggest ways in which this program might be implemented on the open museum floor.