Establishing mathematics for teaching within classroom interactions in teacher education

Teacher educators’ processes of establishing “mathematics for teaching” in teacher education programs have been recognized as an important area for further research. In this study, we examine how two teacher educators establish and make explicit features of mathematics for teaching within classroom interactions. The study shows how the establishment of mathematics for teaching is dependent on the use of keywords from the mathematics education domain, the introduction of variation, and the use of generic communicative strategies. As such, the study could be seen as a contribution to ongoing research on how mathematics teacher educators interactively deal with mathematics for teaching.     

Developmental and contextual factors in the role of severe childhood trauma in geriatric depression: The sample case of former indentured child laborers

The purpose of this study was to quantify the association between childhood traumatic experiences and geriatric depression (GDS) in a population of elderly who were exposed to severe childhood trauma. We aimed to identify the role of childhood maltreatment exposure in geriatric depression and the developmental and contextual factors that exacerbate this relationship. We interviewed 141 former indentured child laborers (58 females) about their experiences as children and their current depressive symptoms (M_age = 77, SD = 6.8). Participants provided their age, the year they were first indentured, duration indentured, current physical health, completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) and the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). Child maltreatment, specifically emotional abuse, was strongly associated with geriatric depression symptoms. These effects were specific to individuals who were removed from their biological families between the ages of 3 and 9 years, and for children who were indentured for 6–12 years. Finally, depression partially mediated the association between medical conditions and daily health impairment, but not for individuals “at risk” for depression by virtue of their maltreatment experiences. This study was conducted with a specific subpopulation of elderly and therefore may not generalize to all geriatric depression, nor to all generations or populations with exposure to childhood adversity. This study demonstrates the importance of using a developmental framework to understand how childhood maltreatment facilitates increased risk for the development of depression in late life.     

A phenomenographic study of students' conceptions of quality in learning in higher education in Rwanda

The aim of this study is to understand the different ways that university students conceptualise quality in learning by drawing on a phenomenographic approach. A total of 20 students in higher education in Rwanda were interviewed and analysis of the interviews generated an outcome space of conceptions of quality in learning as transformation, practice, knowledge durability and employability. The findings illustrate the importance of the relationship between education and work as an important aspect of conceptions of quality in learning. This relationship connects to the discourse of employability in which graduates are expected to become flexible and adaptable to changes in context and over the course of time.     

Success in elite cycling: A prospective and retrospective analysis of race results

Abstract

The development of peak performances is a main research focus in sports science. It is unclear how many former top junior athletes achieve success in the elite class later. The aim of the present study was to examine the careers of athletes who participated in major junior or adult/elite cycling events using prospective and retrospective analysis of competition results. The official results of major junior (age ≤ 18 years) and elite (age > 18 years) cycling races from 1980 to 2004 were analysed. Age-related aspects, career lengths, and success were compared between riders who presented results in both junior and elite races (JUNIOR ELITE) and riders who had no junior race results (ELITE ONLY). Altogether, 27,454 results of 8004 athletes from 108 countries were collected. We found that 29.4% of the elite athletes had participated in junior World Championships, and that 34% of the participants in junior World Championships later participated in major elite competitions. JUNIOR ELITE athletes are significantly more successful in several cycling disciplines and have their first and last elite result at a younger age than ELITE ONLY athletes. No difference was found in career lengths. The data presented here emphasize the importance of long-term training programmes in the development of peak performance in cycling.     

Doping – die Züchtung des Übermenschen

Uncovering new doping scandals does not take an end. The exclamation against this practice of the contest distortion becomes ever louder. The anti-doping wave is about to loom up itself to a tsunami. But why? And against what actually? Doping belongs to the modern occidental culture and philosophy history like space flights and the human enhancement. Doping is the expression of our nihilistic postmodernism. The deregulation and legalization of doping would thus correspond to our historical development rather than its prohibition. And a closer look at the anti-doping wave reveals it as a mere symptom of the prevailing nihilism. The question remains whether we achieve an appropriate “Verwindung” (tortion) of the nihilism rather with or without doping.     

Migration,educational and career guidance and social inclusion

International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance -     

Pre-service teachers’ views about the use of digital educational games for collaborative learning

Education and Information Technologies - Digital educational games (DEGs) constitute an effective teaching approach, particularly when they are used in combination with collaborative learning...     

Using query logs of USPTO patent examiners for automatic query expansion in patent searching

In the patent domain significant efforts are invested to assist researchers in formulating better queries, preferably via automated query expansion. Currently, automatic query expansion in patent search is mostly limited to computing co-occurring terms for the searchable features of the invention. Additional query terms are extracted automatically from patent documents based on entropy measures. Learning synonyms in the patent domain for automatic query expansion has been a difficult task. No dedicated sources providing synonyms for the patent domain, such as patent domain specific lexica or thesauri, are available. In this paper we focus on the highly professional search setting of patent examiners. In particular, we use query logs to learn synonyms for the patent domain. For automatic query expansion, we create term networks based on the query logs specifically for several USPTO patent classes. Experiments show good performance in automatic query expansion using these automatically generated term networks. Specifically, with a larger number of query logs for a specific patent US class available the performance of the learned term networks increases.