Chinese Newspaper Ownership,Corporate Strategies,and Business Models in a Globalizing World

This study takes Beijing Youth Daily (BYD), Beijing's largest newspaper in terms of advertising revenue and second largest in terms of circulation, as a case study to examine and analyze how globalization influences the ownership, corporate strategies, and business models of local newspaper organizations in China; and, thus, accelerates Chinese-style capitalism and media convergence. Declining advertising revenue and the loss of readers due to the digital revolution and the availability of multimedia news channels are global challenges that face newspapers around the world. BYD is no exception. In response, BYD has shifted from an exclusively state ownership model to a split or dual-track management model that has allowed foreign capital into the business operations while the party/state still retains ideological control over the news content. BYD has reoriented its corporate strategies and carried out structural reforms, building a media conglomerate via new titles, acquisitions, concentrations, and convergences; and developed its business models with advertising as a major revenue source. All these measures are market-oriented and intended to maximize newspaper profits by pursuing economies of scale and scope.     

A Comparative Study of Black South African Children from Three Different Contexts

This study compares family characteristics and developmental outcomes of black children (N = 300) from 3 rural contexts in South Africa: the homeland, the resettlement, and the white-owned farms. Parents in the homeland were more likely to be married and had more education, less household crowding, and lower mobility than parents in the other 2 areas, and higher occupational status than parents from the farms. Child outcomes paralleled these differences in material resources and family stability. Children from the homeland scored higher than children from the resettlement or farms on head circumference, vocabulary, quantitative skill, and self-concept, with no significant differences between the latter 2 areas on these outcome variables. Children from the homeland also scored higher than resettlement children on weight, copying skill, and height, with children from the farms measuring lowest on height. Child outcomes were highly intercorrelated in all 3 residence areas, but correlations among family variables, and between family and child variables, showed different patterns across areas. Parent education, occupation, and crowding were the most consistent predictors of physical development, cognitive development, and self-concept. Family mobility and marital status, however, showed different relationships to other family variables and to child outcomes across the 3 environments. These results highlight the importance of studying children in multiple environmental contexts, because family characteristics are not associated uniformly across residence areas.     

Equity and Access: All Students are Mathematical Problem Solvers

Often mathematical instruction for students with disabilities, especially those with learning disabilities, includes an overabundance of instruction on mathematical computation and does not include high-quality instruction on mathematical reasoning and problem solving. In fact, it is a common misconception that students with learning disabilities are not strong problem solvers in general. This article highlights the inherent problem solving strengths that students with learning disabilities possess; how they use those skills to address everyday barriers and challenges, and how teachers can relate these skills to academic mathematical instruction. Additionally, practical classroom examples, suggested teaching strategies, and questions for further examinations are discussed.     

Women’s Involvement in Educational Psychology Journals from 1976 to 2004

Previously, Robinson, McKay, Katayama, and Fan (1998) examined women’s involvement in six educational psychology journals (American Educational Research Journal, Contemporary Educational Psychology, Educational Psychologist, Educational Psychology Review, Journal of Experimental Education, and Journal of Educational Psychology) from 1976 to 1996 and found that although women made gains as authors and editorial board members, they remained underrepresented as editors. In this Reflections on the Field article, we compare the Robinson et al. data with our more recent data. We found that from 1996 to 2004, the percentage of women members in education and psychology organizations has risen. Meanwhile, the percentage of women authors has remained stable; the percentage of women editorial board members has risen slightly; and the percentage of women editors has risen dramatically. We also found that the percentage of women authors and editorial board members lags slightly behind what would be expected based on organizational membership percentages for women. On the other hand, there are now more female editors than would be expected.     

ICT-aided engineering courses: a multi-campus course management

Jerusalem College of Technology (JCT) is a multi-campus institution with identical syllabi for courses in every campus. Moreover, learning at JCT requires at the same time synchronous and asynchronous learning and teaching. For some introductory courses in Mathematics for Engineering students, websites have been built and now upgraded in order to fit the requirements due to multiple campuses. The original triple function model ‘homepage-tutorial-mailing list’ had to be modified in various directions, in order to fit the students' needs and the central role of the course coordinator. We discuss here the structure and management of the websites and the contribution of these supplementary materials towards teaching efficiency and towards students' better learning skills.     

Policy Documents: On the Wall or in the Waste Bin?

It has always been quite fashionable to have a disparaging view about school policy documents and many teachers will have had experiences of being given such documents with great flourish and then never opening them again. Yet, as Iris Keating and her colleagues point out, policy documents could be extremely helpful to teachers as guides to appropriate classroom action and ensurers of a continuity of approach. They clearly need further study as objects in their own right.     

The Second Mathematics Standard Assessment Tasks at Key Stage 1: issues of reliability raised by a five school study

This paper assesses the value that can be put on the mathematical Standard Assessment Task (SAT) score as an indicator of how children are doing compared to others. The results of a study of a sample of 171 Year 2 children from five randomly selected primary schools within one Local Education Authority (LEA) are presented. Pupils’ scores on Mathematics 7, a standardised mathematics test for 7 year‐olds are compared to the mathematics SAT score elicited by them in the previous half‐term. Results show that children with the same Mathematics 7 score may be designated Level 1, 2 or 3 on the mathematics SAT. Conclusions, based on such a small study, are tentative. There is a need to be aware that finding out how a child is doing may be more complicated than simply looking at the SAT results. It may be hypothesised that the 10 point assessment scale is too crude a summative device to measure children's mathematical standards accurately.     

Stretching DNA by electric field and flow field in microfluidic devices: An experimental validation to the devices designed with computer simulations

We examined the performance of three microfluidic devices for stretching DNA. The first device is a microchannel with a contraction, and the remaining two are the modifications to the first. The modified designs were made with the help of computer simulations [C. C. Hsieh and T. H. Lin, Biomicrofluidics 5(4), 044106 (2011) and C. C. Hsieh, T. H. Lin, and C. D. Huang, Biomicrofluidics 6, 044105 (2012)] and they were optimized for operating with electric field. In our experiments, we first used DC electric field to stretch DNA. However, the experimental results were not even in qualitative agreement with our simulations. More detailed investigation revealed that DNA molecules adopt a globular conformation in high DC field and therefore become more difficult to stretch. Owing to the similarity between flow field and electric field, we turned to use flow field to stretch DNA with the same devices. The evolution patterns of DNA conformation in flow field were found qualitatively the same as our prediction based on electric field. We analyzed the maximum values, the evolution and the distributions of DNA extension at different Deborah number in each device. We found that the shear and the hydrodynamic interaction have significant influence on the performance of the devices.     

Biological Inquiry: A New Course and Assessment Plan in Response to the Call to Transform Undergraduate Biology

We transformed our first-year curriculum in biology with a new course, Biological Inquiry, in which >50% of all incoming, first-year students enroll. The course replaced a traditional, content-driven course that relied on outdated approaches to teaching and learning. We diversified pedagogical practices by adopting guided inquiry in class and in labs, which are devoted to building authentic research skills through open-ended experiments. Students develop core biological knowledge, from the ecosystem to molecular level, and core skills through regular practice in hypothesis testing, reading primary literature, analyzing data, interpreting results, writing in disciplinary style, and working in teams. Assignments and exams require higher-order cognitive processes, and students build new knowledge and skills through investigation of real-world problems (e.g., malaria), which engages students’ interest. Evidence from direct and indirect assessment has guided continuous course revision and has revealed that compared with the course it replaced, Biological Inquiry produces significant learning gains in all targeted areas. It also retains 94% of students (both BA and BS track) compared with 79% in the majors-only course it replaced. The project has had broad impact across the entire college and reflects the input of numerous constituencies and close collaboration among biology professors and students.