PRESERVICE TEACHERS’ THOUGHTS AND FEARS ABOUT DISCIPLINING CHILDREN

The purposes of this study were threefold: (1) to determine if fears and concerns about guiding children's behavior and misbehavior is a generalized feeling, or more related to specific circumstances and scenarios; (2) to determine which situations may give students the greatest and least amounts of anxiety; and (3) to explore the relationship between students’ beliefs about the causes of children's misbehavior and their anxiety about specific discipline situations.

After completing a questionnaire, preservice teachers in this study rated children's challenges to their authority as the most difficult. Discipline situations involving conflicts between children (e.g., refusing to share, not joining in activities) were rated as the least difficult to handle. Most of the preservice teachers believed children misbehaved because of a lack of social skills and developmental sophistication rather than because of bad parenting, inherent personality characteristics, or too many adult restrictions. Preservice teachers rated the difficulty of the discipline issues similarly regardless of their beliefs concerning the causes of misbehavior. Implications of this study are discussed.     

MAGIS: mobile augmented-reality games for instructional support

ABSTRACT

We present Mobile Augmented-Reality Games for Instructional Support (MAGIS), a framework for the development of mobile augmented-reality (AR) games for education. The framework supports off-the-shelf, state-of-the-art technologies that enable AR tracking and rendering on consumer-level mobile devices, and integrates these technologies with content-generation tools that simplify the development of educational AR games, especially those that extensively use narrative-based game design and player-location tracking such as location-based historical or museum adventure games. We use Igpaw: Intramuros, a proof-of-concept game developed using MAGIS, to help describe the current state of the framework and to show its efficacy for implementing outdoor location-based educational games, and we briefly outline future development plans to improve MAGIS’ AR support (especially those involving indoor scenarios) as well as to improve the instructional design and authoring phases of AR applications written using this framework.     

Effects of participation in a martial arts–based antibullying program in elementary schools

This study evaluated the Gentle Warrior Program, a traditional martial arts–based intervention to reduce aggression in children, as it was implemented in three elementary schools. The sample consisted of 254 children in grades 3, 4, and 5 who participated in the Gentle Warrior Program as part of a larger school violence intervention. Results indicated that boys who participated in more Gentle Warrior sessions reported a lower frequency of aggression and greater frequency of helpful bystanding (i.e., helpful behavior toward victims of bullying) over time, relative to boys with less frequent participation. The effect of participation on aggression was partially mediated by empathy. The effect of participation on helpful bystanding was fully mediated by changes in student empathy. No significant results were found for girls. Results of the study provide preliminary support for the use of martial arts–based interventions to address bullying in schools for boys, by teaching empathy, self‐control, and peaceful strategies to resolve conflicts. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Changes in self-reported academic cheating across the transition from middle school to high school

Changes in early adolescents' self-reported cheating behaviors in mathematics before and after the transition from middle school to high school are examined. Students were surveyed in school regarding their cheating behaviors in math, and the motivational goal structures perceived in their math classrooms. Surveys were completed twice during the eighth grade (during middle school) and once at the end of the ninth grade (at the end of the first year in high school). Results indicated that self-reported cheating did not change in the year prior to the high school transition, but that reported cheating increased after the transition. Additional analyses indicated that across the high school transition, self-reported cheating in math increased for students who moved from high mastery to low mastery-oriented classes after the transition, and for students who moved from low performance to high performance-oriented classes; in contrast, self-reported cheating decreased for students who moved from low to high mastery-oriented math classrooms.     

A Survey of Families in a Charter Hybrid Homeschool

“Hybrid homeschools” generally operate as formal schools 2–3 days per week. The rest of the week students are homeschooled. These entities therefore share some aspects of conventional schooling along with some aspects of homeschooling and are classified in a variety of ways by their states, local districts, and even their own administrations. Most hybrid homeschools around the nation tend to be private and religiously affiliated, though some public models have emerged. The purpose of this study was to better understand parents’ stated preferences for choosing to enroll their children in a charter school that is organized as a hybrid homeschool network in southern California. An electronic survey was sent through the network’s CEO to all enrolled families asking questions regarding demographics, stated values, and desired sources of information. The results of this survey find that these hybrid homeschool families are on average slightly more ethnically diverse, less wealthy, and less educated compared to private, religious hybrid homeschoolers, but are also more ethnically diverse, more wealthy, and more educated compared to their sponsoring school district. These families tend to place more value on individualized attention and the learning environment than on religion, safety, or formal academic issues when choosing a hybrid homeschool compared to their private, religious counterparts.     

A Survey of Opinion on Methods of Professional Development for Secondary Heads

This paper describes a school management development programme aimed at developing managerial skills and responsibilities across the whole school staff. The paper describes why there is possibly some antipathy to this topic for in‐service education and training (INSET). The approach chosen was to use teachers’ current managerial tasks as the focus for the development so that in conjunction with extant self‐study materials, teachers could design their own INSET appropriate to their current perceived needs.     

基于三阶段DEA的中国区域二氧化碳排放绩效评价研究

要在促进社会经济发展的同时减少二氧化碳排放量,关键在于提高二氧化碳排放绩效.客观正确地评估中国各省份经济发展过程中的二氧化碳排放绩效具有重要现实意义.文章从效率的角度,界定二氧化碳排放绩效的概念,将二氧化碳排放作为非期望产出纳入全要素研究框架,探索性地利用三阶段DEA方法和线性数据转换函数法来评价中国省际区域的二氧化碳排放绩效,剔除了环境变量和随机误差对结果的影响,为真实测度二氧化碳排放绩效提供了可行的方法.结果表明,传统DEA测度的二氧化碳排放平均技术效率和纯技术效率被低估,而平均规模效率被高估;中国区域间二氧化碳排放绩效发展显著不平衡,呈现出“东＞西＞中”的格局,与传统的经济格局存在一定出入.     

User community vs. producer innovation development efficiency: A first empirical study

In this paper we report upon a first empirical exploration of the relative efficiency of innovation development by product users vs. product producers. In a study of over 50 years of product innovation in the whitewater kayaking field, we find users in aggregate were approximately 3× more efficient at developing important kayaking product innovations than were producers in aggregate. We speculate that this result is driven by what we term “efficiencies of scope” in problem-solving. These can favor an aggregation of many user innovators, each spending a little, over fewer producer innovators benefitting from higher economies of scale in product development. We also note that the present study explores only one initial point on what is likely to be a complex efficiency landscape.     

Do Individual Perceptions Matter in Pornography Effects? How Perceived General Acceptance and Influence of Pornography May Impact Agreement With Sex-Role Attitudes

Pornography use is often associated with less-progressive sex-role attitudes, such as endorsement of a sexual double standard between heterosexual partners, but the process by which this relationship occurs is still largely unexamined. The present study was conducted to examine how perceptions about pornography may play a role in the relationship between pornography use and sex-role attitudes. Perceived general acceptance and perceived influence of pornography on most people partially mediated the relationship between pornography use and sex-role attitudes. The more participants reported using pornography, the more they believed pornography was generally accepted and had a positive influence; however, conversely to what was hypothesized, the more positive they perceived pornography’s influence, the less likely they were to report sex-role attitudes that endorse a sexual double standard.     

Neuro-mechanical adjustments to shod versus barefoot treadmill runs in the acute and delayed stretch-shortening cycle recovery phases

In habitually shod recreational runners, we studied the combined influence of footwear and stretch-shortening cycle (SSC) fatigue on treadmill running pattern, paying special attention to neuro-mechanical adjustments in the acute and 2-day delayed recovery periods. The SSC exercise consisted of a series of 25 sub-maximal rebounds on a sledge apparatus repeated until exhaustion. The acute and delayed functional fatigue effects were quantified in a maximal drop jump test. The neuro-mechanical adjustments to fatigue were examined during two submaximal treadmill run tests of 3 min performed either barefoot or with shoes on. Surface electromyographic (EMG) activities, tibial accelerations and kinematics of the right lower limb were recorded during the first and last 15 s of each run. The main result was that neuro-mechanical differences between the shod and barefoot running patterns, classically reported in the absence of fatigue, persisted in the fatigued state. However, in the delayed recovery phase, rearfoot eversion was found to significantly increase in the shod condition. This specific footwear effect is considered as a potential risk factor of overuse injuries in longer runs. Therefore, specific care should be addressed in the delayed recovery phase of SSC fatigue and the use of motion control shoes could be of interest.