Developing a professional vision of classroom practices of a mathematics teacher: views from a researcher and a teacher

The term professional vision points to the many nuanced ways professionals see. This paper traces the development of a professional vision of a researcher and a teacher looking at classroom practices. The researcher’s interest was to capture and study notable aspects of the teacher’s practice. Through a coding scheme, disparate classroom events were organized and analyzed to yield a researcher’s professional vision of the teacher’s practices. For the teacher, through reviewing the video records of his own classroom practices, his professional vision provided a basis for him to reflect and develop professionally. Leveraging on the work of the researcher, he initiated and transformed his own practices. Their collaboration yielded a mutually informed development of professional vision of classroom practices. In juxtaposing the two developments, the researcher and the teacher’s views can be contrasted, their distinctive interests highlighted and common grounds explored. Some implications for developing professional vision are drawn, and it is in the common grounds of the teacher’s professional development and seeing with a goal of enhancing of student learning that hold some promise of a mutual interest in developing a professional vision of classroom practices.     

The spiral of silence: examining how cultural predispositions,news attention,and opinion congruency relate to opinion expression

This study examines new explanatory predictors behind the spiral of silence theory, using the issue of legalization of same-sex marriage in Singapore as the context of study. Our results show that fear of isolation and saving face were negatively associated with individuals' willingness to express their opinion on the issue, whereas news attention and issue salience were positively associated. Also, fear of isolation was negatively associated with individuals' willingness to offer a rationale for their opinion, whereas news attention and issue salience were positively associated. Power distance had no effects on outspokenness. Notably, news attention moderated the influence of fear of isolation and saving face on public outspokenness.     

Biomechanical analysis of dragon boat paddling: A comparison of elite and sub-elite paddlers

Abstract

In this study, video and force analysis techniques were used to distinguish between dragon boat paddlers of different ability. Six elite paddlers (three males, three females) and six sub-elite paddlers (two males, four females) were compared during high-intensity paddling (80–90 strokes · min^?1). Video filming was conducted for two-dimensional kinematic analysis and an instrumented paddle was used to collect force data. Paddling efficiency, paddle force characteristics, and paddler kinematic variables were measured. Elite paddlers achieved higher paddling efficiency than sub-elite paddlers (elite: 76 ± 4%; sub-elite: 67 ± 10%; P = 0.080). Elite paddlers also showed higher peak force (elite: 16.3 ± 4.8 N · kg^?2/3; sub-elite: 11.4 ± 2.6 N · kg^?2/3; P = 0.052), average force (elite: 7.9 ± 2.8 N · kg^?2/3; sub-elite: 5.5 ± 1.4 N · kg^?2/3; P = 0.084), and impulse (elite: 3.0 ± 0.9 (N · s) · kg^?2/3; sub-elite: 1.9 ± 0.4 (N · s) · kg^?2/3; P = 0.026) than sub-elite paddlers, but these three results should be viewed with caution due to the small sample size and the unequal number of males and females in the two groups. Superior technique and greater strength enable the elite paddlers to achieve higher paddling efficiency. Paddlers use different joint movement patterns to develop propulsion, which are reflected in variations in the force–time curve.     

Consensus or dissensus? Stakeholders’ views on the role of play in learning

Across cultures and eras, children have engaged in play as part of the process of growing and maturing into adulthood. Play has been recognized as an effective form of pedagogy to promote learning in the early years. However, beliefs about what play is and how it should be practiced vary across Hong Kong and in other countries. Because Chinese culture places a heavy emphasis on academic achievement, a play-based curriculum has not been widely implemented in the region. Through classroom observations and interviews with key stakeholders in early childhood education, namely parents, teachers, and principals, this study reveals the complexity of views on this matter and uncovers the root cause of the difficulties in supporting play in the Hong Kong kindergartens. These findings may help promote the play-based curriculum in Hong Kong and other countries where play is in crisis.     

Contribution of discourse and morphosyntax skills to reading comprehension in Chinese dyslexic and typically developing children

This study aimed at identifying important skills for reading comprehension in Chinese dyslexic children and their typically developing counterparts matched on age (CA controls) or reading level (RL controls). The children were assessed on Chinese reading comprehension, cognitive, and reading-related skills. Results showed that the dyslexic children performed significantly less well than the CA controls but similarly to RL controls in most measures. Results of multiple regression analyses showed that word-level reading-related skills like oral vocabulary and word semantics were found to be strong predictors of reading comprehension among typically developing junior graders and dyslexic readers of senior grades, whereas morphosyntax, a text-level skill, was most predictive for typically developing senior graders. It was concluded that discourse and morphosyntax skills are particularly important for reading comprehension in the non-inflectional and topic-prominent Chinese system.     

Event-based discrete-time multi-agent consensus over signed digraphs with communication delays

The ability to ensure the desired performance of the cooperative-antagonistic multi-agent networks (MANs) in the presence of communication constraints is an important task in many applications of real systems. In this paper, under the proposed event-triggered condition (ETC), different types of consensus are obtained under different network topology. We concentrates on the event-based bipartite consensus. It is shown that under the proposed ETC (i) the addressed cooperative-antagonistic network with arbitrary communication delays reaches bipartite consensus provided that the network is balanced; (ii) the network model reaches zero if the network is unbalanced. Further, to avoid the continuously verifying the triggering condition, a self-triggered algorithm is proposed for realizing the bipartite consensus of the network model. A numerical example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.     

Massification of higher education and youth transition: skills mismatch,informal sector jobs and implications for China

This study adopts a nationwide survey data set between 2005 and 2013 (Chinese General Social Survey) to explore the influence of the massification of higher education on the transition of Chinese youth into the labour market. Data analysis reveals two major findings. First, the economic returns to college education of recent cohorts of university graduates (those who have graduated from universities not more than 3 years ago) are lower than the cohorts who graduated in 2005 and 2006. Second, recent cohorts of college graduates are likely to work in the urban informal sector, unlike their senior counterparts. These findings could partially be explained by skills mismatch in the labour market but a comprehensive understanding of graduate unemployment in China could be obtained by bringing the broader political economy perspective into the analysis.     

我国部分优秀女排运动员1号位后排进攻技术的运动学研究

采用高速摄影的方法,拍摄了7名优秀女排运动员前攻和后攻的技术影片。经影片解析,得到了后攻与前攻技术等多项运动学参数。在此基础上,提出了完成后攻的技术要领。     

Children's Literature in Adult Education

This article investigates the possible role of children's literature in the education of adult learners of English. This three-year study on adult learners of English from the People's Republic of China shows that children's literature can be effective in teaching linguistic skills such as pronunciation practice and improving language acquisition. Using and reading children's literature is an initial step to developing literary competence, critical thinking, increasing knowledge, and multicultural understanding as well as exposing learners from developing countries to effective innovative educational methodology. Despite the limitations of children's literature—identification with child protagonists—it paves the way to developing literacy in adult literature.     

The cost efficiency impact of the university operation fund on public universities in Taiwan

This study uses the stochastic frontier multiple-product cost function that is modeled after Battese and Coelli [Battese, G. E., & Coelli, T. J. (1995). A model for technical inefficiency effects in a stochastic frontier production for panel data. Empirical Economics 20(2), 325–332.] in order to empirically measure the cost efficiency of the University Operation Fund (UOF) on Taiwan's public universities.The original purpose of the UOF's implementation was to reduce the government's financial burden by increasing cost efficiency in higher education institutions. By nature, the UOF differs from the traditional governmental budget regimes in three major respects. First of all, institutional operations and programs are no longer fully funded by government appropriations. Secondly, the universities can now retain surplus resources. Finally, the regulations on the use of funds raised by each institution itself are now less cumbersome. These differences provide universities with incentives for higher cost-efficiency and more active fund-raising.The empirical results from our study, which are based on panel data gathered from 34 public universities during the academic years 1992–2000, suggest that the adoption of the UOF has had a significantly negative impact on cost efficiency.