The Use of Video Demonstrations and Particulate Animation in General Chemistry

Different visualization techniques have been used for teaching chemistry concepts. Previous studies have shown that when molecular animations and video demonstrations are used, students seem to better correlate all three levels of representation: macroscopic, submicroscopic, and symbolic. This thinking process allows the students to improve their conceptual understanding and ability to create dynamic mental models. In this study, general chemistry students viewed three experiments involving dynamic fluid equilibrium in a graphic design, a video demonstration, and a molecular animation. The study investigated whether video demonstrations or particulate animations helped the students' conceptual understanding, and if the order of visualizations (video or animation first) produced any differences. Students showed improvement after each visualization. Surprisingly, there was significant improvement in responses between the first and second visualization. This work shows the importance of combining both types of visualizations, but it does not indicate a preference toward a specific order.     

Distinctive 16 PF Personality Traits of Librarians

ABSTRACT

While there is a fairly extensive literature on core competencies of librarians, there is a paucity of research on personality traits that distinguish them from those in other occupations. The present study compared the personality traits of 88 librarians with a general norm group using the 16 PF, a widely researched normal-personality inventory. We found that librarians are more apprehensive, cautious, flexible, focused, imaginative, open-minded, respectful, self-reliant, serious, tender-minded, and trusting as well as higher on general reasoning skills than those in the norm group. Findings are discussed in terms of consistency with core competences of librarians. Practical implications were noted, including recruitment and coaching of job incumbents.     

From vision to reality—Managing changein the provision of library and information services to nurses,midwives, health visitors and PAMs:a case study of the North Thames experience with the Inner London Consortium

One ofthe North Thames’ pioneering consortia, the Inner London Consortium (ILC) is a complexbody which includes NHS Trusts with teaching hospital university connections, community-basedTrusts and general hospital acute Trusts. Within the consortium there are 12000 trained nurses,midwives, health visitors and other professional staff working in the professions allied to medicine(PAMs), all of whom require access to and provision of appropriate library information services. In 1994, taking into account experiences elsewhere in the Region and nationally, itbecame clear that library issues were complex and would become acute with the move of nursinglibraries from ILC Trust sites over a very short timescale. A report on the issues commissioned bythe Consortium recommended that a library project, which built on existing NHS Trust PGMDEfunded library resources and moved these to a multidisciplinary base to serve the consortiummembership, be implemented. The objective of providing access to library informationservices for nurses and PAMs was achieved. Successes that emerged from the implementationincluded: The registration in Trust libraries of almost 12000 new members within theinitial 6-month monitoring period. The development of service level agreements andstandards for the delivery of services to these new user groups. This paper describes theprocesses behind these significant and complex changes.     

Developing a Student Year Planner

How to create something which is more meaningful to students than a simple homework diary is the issue that underlies this paper. The introduction of a student planner into year 9 of a high school is followed. The writer used reflexive practitioner research and ethnographic techniques to raise issues concerning the role of the tutor, teacher/pupil and teacher/parent relationships. He suggests that a gap appears to exist in pupil's ability to plan for the mid-term. The difficulties of classroom innovation and change in relation to teacher's craft knowledge is touched upon.     

Centrifugal schooling: third sector policy networks and the reassembling of curriculum policy in England

This article examines changes in curriculum policy in secondary education in England. It is concerned with recent curriculum policy and reform, and the proliferation of non-government actors in curriculum policy creation. It examines the emergence of a loose alliance of third sector organisations and their involvement in a series of alternative ‘curriculum experiments’. The third sector curriculum policy network revolves around a policy vision of decentralisation constituted by public–private partnership, media-friendliness, social enterprise and an ‘open source’ or network-based organisational logic. It assembles a policy ideal of ‘centrifugal schooling’ which links together ideas about ‘networked governance’ with ‘flexible’ learning and ‘entrepreneurial’ curricula. The article traces and discusses some of the inter-organisational relations, materials and discourses of the third sector network of alternative curriculum policy developments, and provides a case study of a prototypical third sector curriculum programme. It examines the organisational relations and practices by which the project was produced and the conditions leading to its failure.