Pragmatic language in deaf and hard of hearing students: correlation with success in general education

Deaf and hard of hearing children have shown delays and difficulties in pragmatic behaviors due to insufficient exposure to common daily discourse and underlying impoverishment in all components of language development. In a study in a school district in a southeastern U.S. state, the researchers investigated the relationship between sociolinguistic pragmatic competence in 81 deaf and hard of hearing students and these students' degree of hearing loss, communication mode, and degree of success in general education. Two measures, one devised by the state's department of education and one developed within the local school system, were used: the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (Georgia Department of Education, 2000) and the Socio-Pragmatic Skills Checklist for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students (Cobb County School District, 1997). The researchers found that whether the students used spoken language or signed language, socio-pragmatic language had a high, positive correlation with academic outcomes.     

Distancing to self‐protect: the perpetuation of inequality in higher education through socio‐relational dis/engagement

This paper explores the social class‐differentiated behaviours of access and traditional‐entry students, based on a three‐year constructivist grounded theory study with 45 undergraduates at an Irish university. The participant groups behaved significantly differently within the socio‐relational realm, engaging in various forms of distancing behaviours motivated by a desire to self‐protect and based on perceived relative social positioning. The paper illustrates some ways in which both disadvantage and privilege are performed at the post‐entry stage in a widening participation context. It is argued that the ‘closure’ behaviours of class‐based groups constrain the building of social capital by working‐class students, thus potentially limiting the ability of widening participation policies in achieving equality goals.     

Professional Development for School Library Media Professionals: Elements for Success

The American Association for School Librarians suggests an important mission for school librarians is to ensure personal growth through ongoing exposure to conferences, journal articles, webinars, presentations, and membership in professional organizations. As professional educators, School Librarians should exemplify the vision for being life-long learners. Methods and means to grow in the profession should be evaluated and examined for elements that lead to success in growth and maturity as professionals in school library media. This article investigates the attributes of successful professional development experiences which include learning environment, characteristics of learners, methodologies, and instructional design of staff development workshops.     

Corresponding drivability control and energy control strategy in uninterrupted multi-speed mining trucks

An hybrid uninterrupted multi-speed transmission (HUMST), based on the integration of a planetary gear set and a 3-speed automatic manual transmission (3-AMT), is developed to satisfy the specific performance indexes of mining trucks. The power-split device can alleviate and eliminate the inherent torque interruption of the 3-AMT during gear shift by implementing the designed cooperative shift control strategy which is optimized by quadratic performance index. In order to achieve fast torque coordination while guaranteeing the driving comfort performance, the torque profiles of the power split device and the traction motor are optimized by Linear-quadratic regulator (LQR) algorithm. Dynamic programming (DP) is implemented as a benchmark to demonstrate the maximum fuel efficiency of the proposed HUMST. Because of the high computational cost of optimal control strategies such as DP, an improved real-time control strategy (IRTCS) using modified Gaussian distribution function is proposed to significantly reduce the computing load. As efficiency-oriented energy control strategy would result in frequent gear shifts, to achieve a desirable tradeoff between the overall efficiency and the shift stability, multi-objective genetic algorithm (MGA) is integrated to optimize the overall performance. The detail mathematical and dynamic model shows that the proposed shifting strategy with LQR can effectively suppress shift jerk, and the proposed IRTCS with MGA can reduce shift frequency by 70.78% to improve the drivability, only sacrificing 4.86% of overall efficiency compared to that of DP.     

Understanding Bereavement in a Christian University: A Qualitative Exploration

This phenomenological study, based on ecological systems theory, examined the college student bereavement experience in a Christian university. Undergraduate students (N = 127) from a small Christian university provided answers to open‐ended questions about their experiences regarding college following a death loss. Results indicate that students are generally successful in adapting to bereavement and prefer an environment open to discussing death and asking difficult religious questions. Implications for counselors are provided.     

Use and Perceptions of E-books by Academic Staff in Further Education

This article reports on a study of the awareness, perceptions and use of e-books by academic staff in Further Education (FE) colleges throughout Northern Ireland (NI). It is the first comprehensive study of e-book use by FE faculty in NI and fills a significant gap in the research literature on e-books in education, which has tended to focus on Higher Education and the university setting. Data was collected through an online survey which was distributed to FE faculty across NI. The findings show that although FE academic staff are receptive to e-books and welcome them as a resource, poor reading experience and lack of awareness of relevant titles have had an impact. In particular, the research found that 40% of academic staff, in post less than five years, had not used e-books. Greater availability of titles, promotion, and better integration within teaching and learning emerge as key requisites for effective service delivery and enhancement of e-books within FE, as does the need for better targeted instruction and training aimed at academic staff. Understanding patrons' views, awareness, needs, habits and expectations in relation to e-books is crucial to help direct collection content while budgets remain tight and physical space limited.     

Going Dutch: The Development of Collaborative Practices Between Higher Education and Museums and Galleries

This study reports on a very successful collaboration between teacher education courses in Manchester and Amsterdam and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The central aim of the initiative was to promote and sustain partnerships between Higher Education (HE) institutions, public galleries and schools with a view to developing, delivering and sharing good practice in art and design within a European context.     

The Funding of Higher Education in the UK: a Contribution to the Debate

In this paper we review arguments that have been well rehearsed in the economic literature in the past twenty years and which are relevant to the present debate over student loans and the funding of the higher education sector.
The body of the paper assesses four finding proposals: (1) The Government's mortgage-type loan scheme, (2) The Barr, National Insurance repayment scheme, (3) The Graduate Tax and (4) A Loan scheme based on the individual higher education institution.
Each proposal is assessed in terms of its efficiency impact in six dimensions, (i) set up costs and flexibility, (ii) administrative costs (iii) incentives (iv) information (v) the balance of public and private involvement, and (vi) equity.
We conclude that, overall, we would not recommend any of the alternatives as unambiguously superior on all counts. Insofar as a radical approach is to be implemented we argue that a scheme based on the individual higher education institution, with repayment via the National Insurance system, is probably the best option.