Professional assistance to legislators: The research branch of Canada's library of parliament

The extent of government involvement in public activity and the highly technical aspects of the issues arising in our legislatures, points to the need for expert assistance for lawmakers. In Canada, this need was addressed at the federal level by the establishment of a research service as a unit of the Parliamentary Library in 1965. This article gives an insight into the structure and variety of services provided by the 50 professionals of the research unit and the new directions it is taking in addressing the challenges in its work for Canada's two Houses of Parliament.     

帕克尔泰夫人的老虎(节选)

萨基是英国小说家赫克托·休·芒罗的笔名。此名取自11世纪波斯诗人欧玛尔·海亚姆所著诗集《鲁拜集》。他的短篇小说多以20世纪初英国上层社会和中产阶级无聊人的生活为题材,讽刺他们的浅薄、庸俗、势利和装腔作势。这群人中大多数游手好闲、穷极无聊,用宴乐、清谈、吹牛、养病、争风吃醋、无事生非来填补生活的空虚。在某些故事里作者也鞭挞了那些只想不劳而获的落魄者。在形式上是传统的,但结构严密、笔调辛辣、对话机智、多警策之言,故事结局往往令人发噱或出人意外。     

Teachers’ Perceptions of the Goals of Education in the USA: responses to the educational reform literature of the 1980s

What do teachers in the USA perceive as the significant goals and purposes of education? To what extent are these perceptions related to those advocated in the reform literature of the 1980s? Responses to a survey administered to 279 teachers in metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia are analyzed in this study. Findings indicate some areas of congruence between teachers and reformers. In areas where the reform literature is divided, especially with regard to educational purpose, teacher opinion is similarly divided. Teacher responses, however, also indicate some attempt to synthesize seemingly disparate views. To provide an expanded frame of reference, the article offers some preliminary findings based on John Goodlad's Teachers for Our Nation's Schools. The article concludes with commentary about the nature and likelihood of educational reform in the USA.     

Children's Sensitivity to Lack of Understanding

Successful tutoring depends in part on child tutors’ ability to recognise and interpret accurately signals of misunderstanding by their tutees. Age- and gender-related differences were investigated in a study which exposed 80 children to a video-recorded episode involving a target child receiving ambiguous instructions in her attempts to move a model car along a designated route on a playmat roadway from one destination to another. The results showed that explicit, general and facial modes of displaying puzzlement by the target child were judged as equally powerful expressions of degree of puzzlement, but 8-10 year olds judged the target child as significantly more puzzled than did 7 year olds. Older children were also more likely to attribute the puzzlement of the target child to the ambiguous instructions than to her verbal or facial expression of puzzlement. Girls were generally more accurate than boys in judging facial expressions and less likely than boys to give wrong or alternatively ambiguous responses when given the opportunity to correct the video-recorded ambiguous instructions. The results throw some light on the developing sensitivities of boys and girls in recognising and attributing failures of understanding by other children.     

Proceedings of the British hackademy

As journalism has become a ‘profession’, universities around the country have begun offering courses which prepare students to enter the field. The author, a journalist, discusses his experiences of teaching on one such course.     

Viewing a phonological deficit within a multifactorial model of dyslexia

Participants were administered multiple measures of phonological awareness, oral language, and rapid automatized naming at the beginning of kindergarten and multiple measures of word reading at the end of second grade. A structural equation model was fit to the data and latent scores were used to identify children with a deficit in phonological awareness alone or in combination with other kindergarten deficits. Children with a deficit in phonological awareness in kindergarten were found to be five times more likely to have dyslexia in second grade than children without such a deficit. This risk ratio substantially increased with the addition of deficits in both oral language and rapid naming. Whereas children with one or more kindergarten deficits were at heighten risk for dyslexia, some of these children were found to be adequate or better readers. These results are discussed within a multifactorial model of dyslexia that includes both risk and protective factors.     

公民教育的进展研究：发达国家的探索

21世纪初，无论是在国家层面还是在国际范围，人们都开始对公民教育产生新的兴趣。越来越多具有多元文化的民主国家对作为民主公民教育基础的人权教育的国际共识、全球化进程所带来的统一性与多样性之间关系的冲突特征、许多民主的民族一国家对公民（特别是年轻人）的政治参与水平以及对种族主义倾向的反民主运动的忧虑等，都被看作是引进和加强公民教育的原因。一个由国际学者组成的研究小组，通过考察、研究为我们确认了多元文化的民主体系中公民教育在教学方面的一些重要原则、概念以及公民教育对学校课程的促进。发达国家在实践方面的经验显示，成功的公民教育要求一个清晰的政策框架和专业的教师培训等。