Parent Surveys for Teacher Evaluation

Parent or guardian perceptions play a specialized role in the evaluation of school teachers. Parents are important stakeholders in teacher success, they are in some instances partners in the teachers' work, parents have unique personal information about student learning, and they can report on the teacher duties to inform parents about the classroom and child progress. This study analyzed the responses of parents to 12 survey items concerning teacher performance in 201 classrooms. The surveys were used as part of an innovative teacher evaluation program in which teachers elected to include parent feedback as one objective data source for annual review. In this study three factors emerged as important concerns for parents: humane treatment of students, support for pupil learning, and effective communication and collaboration with parents. Recommendations for use of specific survey items can be based on the empirical results of this sampling. The data gathered by parent surveys define one dimension of quality which may vary in importance from one teacher to another.     

The role of relevant active questions in learning based upon successive presentations

Both active questions i.e. questions asked by subjects, and provided (or passive) questions i.e. offered to subjects as problems for solution, had been found to facilitate learning and retention of prose material when subjects were faced with a task of sufficient difficulty to challenge their competence. With difficult prose, boys and low ability subjects had gained most from active questions. These effects were more pronounced in the long term. In this study, the effects of relevant active questions i.e. questions which subjects can put alongside answers, are investigated and compared with those of active and provided questions, over a series of six presentations for both the short and the long term (i.e. after ten months). In the short term, although active questions give greater help than provided questions on the first presentation, and relevant active questions give the greatest improvement between the first and second presentations, provided questions are the most helpful overall. In the long term, however, both the active questions treatments prove to be as effective as provided questions. For low ability boys, the difference between treatments is negligble even in the short term; under the relevant active questions treatment the number of questions asked is greater; and the decline in inspection time over presentations is negligible.This study formed part of a Schools' Council Research project (Director: Dr. W. P. Robinson) in the Department of Psychology, University of Southampton.     

Which notion of implication is the right one? From logical considerations to a didactic perspective

Implication is at the very heart of mathematical reasoning. As many authors have shown, pupils and students experience serious difficulties in using it in a suitable manner. In this paper, we support the thesis that these difficulties are closely related with the complexity of this notion. In order to study this complexity,we refer to Tarski's semantic truth theory,which contributes to clarifying the different aspects of implication: propositional connective, logically valid conditional, generalized conditional,inference rules. We will show that for this purpose, it is necessary to extend the classical definition of implication as a relation between propositions to a relation between open sentences with at least one free variable. This permits to become aware of the fact that, in some cases, the truth-value of a given mathematical statement is not constrained by the situation, contrary to the common standpoint that, in mathematics, a statement is either true or false. In the present paper, the didactic relevance of this theoretical stance will be illustrated by an analysis of two problematic situations and the presentation of some experimental results from our research on first-year university students' understanding of implication. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Children’s Extracurricular Activities

Why do children learn in different ways: some are good students who show interest and zeal, while others are lazy and have to be taught against their will? Why do schools have over- and underachievers? Of course, there are a multitude of reasons. But almost 50 years ago it was shown using large data sets that families with high socioeconomic status are more likely to have children who are good students. Of course, there are many examples of successful students from poor families. However, they tend to be the exception to the rule. The certainty of success in school increases with rising socioeconomic status.     

Interaction of LDL and platelets in ischaemic and ischaemic risk subjects

Platelets play a vital role in the progression of atherosclerosis and thrombosis, a major cause of death worldwide. Platelets are activated by many triggers like elevated LDL in blood resulting in aggregation and formation of plaque. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of LDL and signal transduction inhibitor on the activation of platelets in Ischaemic risk subjects. Platelets from IHD and hyperlipidemic subjects were hypersensitive to ADP, as higher levels of platelet aggregation were observed in these groups. LDL from IHD hyperlipidemic subjects was more effective in activating platelets from any other group. Ox-LDL was more effective in activating platelets than native-LDL as monitored by level of platelet aggregation induced by PAF and thrombin. Calcium channel blocker, nifedipine and verapamil inhibited platelet aggregation at micromolar level. Protein kinase inhibitor, staurosporine was effective in inhibiting ADP induced aggregation at nanomolar level.     

Clinico-Biochemical indexing of calcium urolithiasis on the basis of urinary citrate to calcium ratio and inhibition of mineralisation of urinary stone forming minerals by human urine

Urinary citric acid and calcium levels have been estimated in the urine of 20 normal healthy persons as well as 12 urinary stone patients. Inhibition efficiency of these urine samples towards the mineralisation of urinary stone forming minerals, viz., calcium phosphate, oxalate or carbonate, has been studied in an experimental model. Statistical correlation of the above data has been made by computing the coefficient of determination and unexplained variance. Clinico-biochemical indexing of calcium urolithiasis risk factor has been attempted in the light of the data.     

Method evaluation of an enzymatic method for serum creatinine

Selecting the correct method for routine analysis by ‘method evaluation’ is an important component of quality assurance. It is a step-wise procedure that evaluates various analytical parameters like accuracy, precision etc of the given method. Finally reference intervals are established for selected population. We evaluated an enzymatic method for serum creatinine. The results show that it is an acceptable method based on the above mentioned criteria.     

Synthesis of RC transfer immittance functions with a minimum number of capacitors

In this paper a method for the realization of RC transfer immittance functions with an unsymmetrical lattice is presented. The method yields minimal capacitor realizations for Z₁₂(s) with no pole at s = 0 and ?y₁₂(s) having no pole at s = ∞. The number of resistors needed are only two more than the minimum needed.