Turning the focus from ‘Other’ to science education: exploring the invisibility of Whiteness

This paper provides another way to gaze upon Brad’s story as presented by van Eijck and Roth (2010). It raises questions about infrastructural racism in contemporary science education by exploring its association with Whiteness and White privilege. To explore the racial positioning inherent in Western science education specific attention is given to the positions of power that accompany Western ways of knowing the world (i.e., science education) in comparison to Other ways of knowing the world (i.e., First Nations Ways of Knowing). The paper suggests the power relationships inherent within this dualism are asymmetrical due to the implications of Whiteness within colonial societies. Even though power relations were not discussed in Brad’s story, the paper suggests the implications were visible. The paper concludes by advocating for a re-imagining in science education where the traditional ontological and epistemological foundations are deconstructed and spaces are created for enacting practical ways of resisting oppression.

Marketing methods for electronic resources in medical libraries: a study on the application of the analytical hierarchy process

Objective:Paired with the high cost of providing access to electronic resources in medical libraries, the inefficient use of these resources highlights the need for more efforts to promote these resources than ever before. In this study, electronic resource marketing methods were prioritized and the best strategies were determined using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP).Methods:Using an analytical survey of officials of medical libraries, the most common methods for marketing electronic resources in libraries were determined and divided into categories of strategies. Five important criteria for marketing strategies were also selected. Using the analytical hierarchy process, pairwise comparisons were performed between the alternatives (i.e., strategies), which were evaluated against the selected criteria. Data analysis was performed using Expert Choice 11 software.Results:A total of 44 electronic resource marketing methods were identified and categorized into 4 strategies. On average, 43.9% of these methods were used by the surveyed libraries. The analytical hierarchy process showed that simplicity was the most important criterion and that communication networks were the best electronic resource marketing strategy. Home/off-campus access, group training, library search stations, and marketing by individual librarians were the most preferred methods of marketing electronic resources.Conclusion:With the availability of a variety of different methods for marketing electronic resources, medical libraries must select strategies based on important criteria depending on the characteristics of the library, librarians, and users. Thus, the analytical hierarchy process can be an effective and practical solution to decision-making by mathematically prioritizing the selection of the best strategies from a set of alternatives based on differentially weighted criteria.     

Use of Reference in the Narratives of Kurdish-Persian Bilingual Children

This study investigates some of the differences and similarities between Kurdish-Persian bilinguals and Persian monolinguals with respect to the use of referring expressions in spoken narratives. The narratives were elicited from 36 participants, consisting of 24 bilinguals （Groups l and 2） and 12 monolinguals （Group 3） in the first four grades of primary school using picture narrative book. The results have revealed that Group 1 （bilinguals told the story in Kurdish） used definite noun phrases most frequently followed by zero anaphors, indefinite noun phrases, and pronouns. Group 2 who narrated the story in Persian produced definite nouns most frequently followed by pronouns, zero anaphors, and indefinite noun phrases. Group 3 （Persian monolinguals） employed definite noun phrases most frequently followed by zero anaphors, pronouns, and indefinite noun phrases. The significant difference between Groups 1 and 2 and Groups 2 and 3 has been in indefinite noun phrases and between Groups 1 and 3 in the use of pronouns. One reason is that children universally apply similar strategies regardless of their first language （L l）. The conclusion is that some of the differences are due to the difference in the structure between Persian and the dialects of Kurdish.     

Multidimensional and Hierarchical Assessment of School Motivation: Cross‐cultural validation

This study examines the multidimensional and hierarchical structure of achievement goal orientation measured by the Inventory of School Motivation. The instrument consists of eight different scales with 43 survey items (ranging from three to seven items each). Each scale reflects one of eight specific dimensions: task, effort, competition, social power, affiliation, social concern, praise, and token. The study also examines the ability of these eight first‐order factors to define four general second‐order factors—mastery, performance, social factors, and extrinsic factors—as well as one third‐order factor, general motivation. Participants came from seven different cultural groups in high schools in Australia (n = 4,787), Hong Kong (n = 697), the United States (n = 2,660), and Africa (n = 819). Nested confirmatory factor analyses support a multidimensional, hierarchical school motivation construct. The model was invariant across cultural groups. The findings provide a strong theoretical structure and tool for further school motivation research.     

Optimized sliding mode current controller for power converters with non-minimum phase nature

This paper proposes a unified method to design an optimized type of the hysteresis modulation-based sliding mode current controller for non-minimum phase power converters in continuous conduction mode. The traditional sliding mode controlled converters have a slow transient voltage response at heavy loads, a large overshoot at light loads and during abrupt output resistance variations. To solve these problems, an optimized feedback control scheme is used according to the output resistance to adjust the coefficients of the controller. The basic idea of this controller is to suggest a new way for reduction of the sensitivity function amplitude of the closed loop system. The presented approach is developed for three basic DC/DC converters; i.e. boost, buck-boost and quadratic boost converters. Generally, the certain advantages of the suggested control approach are: (i) a fast transient response can be achieved in heavy load conditions, (ii) the voltage overshoot can be effectively reduced during load variations; (iii) the transient voltage overshoot can be eliminated in light load conditions; (iv) the closed loop control sensitivity can be reduced and therefore, the performance specification of a control system can be improved compared with the conventional sliding mode current control. To show the reliability of the suggested control scheme, simulations and experimental results for the derived systems are developed. Several conditions are performed to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed controller.     

PERSON: Personalized information retrieval evaluation based on citation networks

Despite the importance of personalization in information retrieval, there is a big lack of standard datasets and methodologies for evaluating personalized information retrieval (PIR) systems, due to the costly process of producing such datasets. Subsequently, a group of evaluation frameworks (EFs) have been proposed that use surrogates of the PIR evaluation problem, instead of addressing it directly, to make PIR evaluation more feasible. We call this group of EFs, indirect evaluation frameworks. Indirect frameworks are designed to be more flexible than the classic (direct) ones and much cheaper to be employed. However, since there are many different settings and methods for PIR, e.g., social-network-based vs. profile-based PIR, and each needs some special kind of data to do the personalization based on, not all the evaluation frameworks are applicable to all the PIR methods. In this paper, we first review and categorize the frameworks that have already been introduced for evaluating PIR. We further propose a novel indirect EF based on citation networks (called PERSON), which allows repeatable, large-scale, and low-cost PIR experiments. It is also more information-rich compared to the existing EFs and can be employed in many different scenarios. The fundamental idea behind PERSON is that in each document (paper) d, the cited documents are generally related to d from the perspective of d’s author(s). To investigate the effectiveness of the proposed EF, we use a large collection of scientific papers. We conduct several sets of experiments and demonstrate that PERSON is a reliable and valid EF. In the experiments, we show that PERSON is consistent with the traditional Cranfield-based evaluation in comparing non-personalized IR methods. In addition, we show that PERSON can correctly capture the improvements made by personalization. We also demonstrate that its results are highly correlated with those of another salient EF. Our experiments on some issues about the validity of PERSON also show its validity. It is also shown that PERSON is robust w.r.t. its parameter settings.     

AFAR: adaptive fuzzy ant-based routing for communication networks

We propose a novel approach called adaptive fuzzy ant-based routing （AFAR）, where a group of intelligent agents （or ants） builds paths between a pair of nodes, exploring the network concurrently and exchanging obtained information to update the routing tables. Routing decisions can be made by the fuzzy logic technique based on local information about the current network state and the knowledge constructed by a previous set of behaviors of other agents. The fuzzy logic technique allows multiple constraints such as path delay and path utilization to be considered in a simple and intuitive way. Simulation tests show that AFAR outperforms OSPF, AntNet and ASR, three of the currently most important state-of-the-art algorithms, in terms of end-to-end delay, packet delivery, and packet drop ratio. AFAR is a promising alternative for routing of data in next generation networks.     

Relationship-based Intervention with Young Children with Autism in Saudi Arabia: Impediments and Consequences of Parenting Stress and Depression

ABSTRACT

This investigation examined the consequences and effects of the severity of mothers psychosocial functioning as assessed by measures parenting stress and depression in a randomised control trial of a Relationship-based Intervention (RBI) called Responsive Teaching (RT). The sample included 28 parents and preschool aged children with Autism from Saudi Arabia. RT subjects received weekly parent–child intervention sessions for 4 months. Dependent variables were mothers’ style of interaction as assessed by the PICCOLO at post intervention as well as pre- and post-measures of parenting stress and depression. There were three findings from this study. First, mothers who participated in this study had extremely high levels of psychosocial dysfunction. Nearly all reported clinical levels of parenting stress and more than 40% reported clinical levels of depressive symptoms. Second, high levels of psychosocial dysfunction did not prevent mothers from participating in RT as indicated by their ability to integrate RT strategies into their interactions with their children. Third, RT was associated with substantial improvements in mother’s parenting stress and depression. Implication for early intervention practice are discussed.     

Raising teachers’ voices: an in-depth qualitative inquiry into teachers’ working conditions and professional development needs in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,a province of Pakistan

This study documented in detail teachers’ voices about their working conditions, professional development needs and opportunities to cater to these needs. The study reported in this paper was conducted as part of a large-scale study that used mixed methods to assess teachers’ professional development needs. The qualitative data reported in this paper were collected using focus group discussion with teachers (N = 481), classroom observation (N = 66), post-observation interviews with teachers (N = 24) and analysis of qualitative responses from survey questionnaires (N = 200). By bringing together a collection of teachers’ voices, the findings of the study illuminate a hope for positive change in teaching and learning in public schools in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, provided that teachers are genuinely considered as part of the solution and are facilitated with necessary physical and structural resources and psychological incentives. The education system needs to create conditions in schools that support teachers’ work and their continued professional growth.     

The Relative Effectiveness of Integrated Reading Study Strategy and Conceptual Physics Approach

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the combined and partial effects of the Integrated Reading/Study Strategy and Conceptual Physics Approach on ninth grade private high school students’ achievement in and attitudes toward optics. The Integrated Reading/Study Strategy is a new strategy which was developed by integrating previously existing reading strategies of the KWL and SQ3R with classroom lecturing. The Conceptual Physics Approach is an instructional strategy developed on the basis of Conceptual Physics suggested by Paul G. Hewitt. To investigate the partial and combined effects of methods, factorial design was used. The study was conducted with 124 students from two private high schools in the ?ankaya district region of Ankara, Turkey. Various teaching/learning materials were developed and used for the study. Two measuring tools, Achievement Test about Optics and Attitude Scale about Optics were used as pre and post tests before and after instruction. The study continued for a two-month treatment period. The results of the study showed that the combined effect of the Integrated Reading/Study Strategy and Conceptual Physics Approach improved students’ achievement significantly compared to the separate individual methods. Although the product of the Integrated Reading/Study Strategy and Conceptual Physics Approach increased students’ attitudes more compared to the remaining methods, the result is not statistically significant.