Counselling individuals and society models: Contexts, goals and guidance practices

Guidance counselling practices develop against specific economic,social and technical backgrounds. They are also encompassed by certainideological frameworks. These same practices also have complex relations with theproblematics of human sciences. Current research in these fields proffersa far more complicated portrait of subjects, occupations and theirrelations than that previously envisaged. The subject is seen as a multivocalsocial actor who can find in the occupational field social forms ofidentification and as an individual, the organisation of who's mind is– at least in part – the product of internalisation of various socialrelations structures. The concept of a dialectic relation between occupational identity, occupational interactions and work systemimplies a need for considerable caution when using guidance softwareprograms or questionnaires about interests, values or types. However,counselling processes appear to be influenced above all by implied orexplicit social, political and ethical goals.     

A Faculty Merit Pay Allocation Model

Merit review processes within academic departments usually consist of two parts: a performance review and evaluation step and a monetary calculation step. Of the two, the performance review step is clearly the more important in achieving fairness and equity. However, the monetary calculation step also plays a key role in maintaining the integrity of the overall process. In an attempt to address the issue of salary compression, the principle used by most departments in allocating merit pay is to award comparable percentage increases in salary to faculty members with similar merit ratings. A merit pay allocation model based on this principle is presented in this paper. The model, a major generalization of an earlier one presented by Camp, Gibbs, and Masters (1988), enables users to calculate merit pay amounts for individual faculty members in a systematic and efficient manner. It is also sufficiently flexible to allow for the incorporation of policy directives often contained in pay packages.     

Effects of Computerized Instruction on the Use of Punctuation Strategies by Students with LD

An interactive multimedia software program was developed for teaching punctuation strategies and then tested with middle‐school and high‐school students with learning disabilities. Students at each school level were randomly selected into an experimental or control group. Results showed that experimental students at both school levels performed similarly by earning significantly higher scores on a test of punctuation usage than the control students. Additionally, experimental students in both school cohorts inserted significantly fewer incorrect punctuation marks than the controls. Furthermore, the experimental students generalized their use of the strategies to a test where they wrote their own sentences. Thus, this study shows that students with LD can learn punctuation strategies at a high level of mastery and can generalize their skills to sentence editing and sentence construction tasks when taught through interactive multimedia.     

A survey on evaluation of summarization methods

The increasing volume of textual information on any topic requires its compression to allow humans to digest it. This implies detecting the most important information and condensing it. These challenges have led to new developments in the area of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Information Retrieval (IR) such as narrative summarization and evaluation methodologies for narrative extraction. Despite some progress over recent years with several solutions for information extraction and text summarization, the problems of generating consistent narrative summaries and evaluating them are still unresolved. With regard to evaluation, manual assessment is expensive, subjective and not applicable in real time or to large collections. Moreover, it does not provide re-usable benchmarks. Nevertheless, commonly used metrics for summary evaluation still imply substantial human effort since they require a comparison of candidate summaries with a set of reference summaries. The contributions of this paper are three-fold. First, we provide a comprehensive overview of existing metrics for summary evaluation. We discuss several limitations of existing frameworks for summary evaluation. Second, we introduce an automatic framework for the evaluation of metrics that does not require any human annotation. Finally, we evaluate the existing assessment metrics on a Wikipedia data set and a collection of scientific articles using this framework. Our findings show that the majority of existing metrics based on vocabulary overlap are not suitable for assessment based on comparison with a full text and we discuss this outcome.     

Net joint moments and muscle activation in barbell squats without and with restricted anterior leg rotation

Muscle utilisation in squat exercise depends on technique. The purpose of this study was to compare net joint moments (NJMs) and muscle activation during squats without and with restricted leg dorsiflexion. Experienced men (n = 5) and women (n = 4) performed full squats at 80% one repetition maximum. 3D motion analysis, force platform and (EMG) data were collected. Restricting anterior leg rotation reduced anterior leg (P = 0.001) and posterior thigh (P < 0.001) rotations, resulting in a smaller knee flexion range of motion (P < 0.001). At maximum squat depth, ankle plantar flexor (P < 0.001) and knee extensor (P < 0.001) NJM were higher in unrestricted squats. Hip extensor NJM (P = 0.14) was not different between squat types at maximum squat depth. Vastus lateralis (P > 0.05), vastus medialis (P > 0.05) and rectus femoris (P > 0.05) EMG were not different between squat types. Unrestricted squats have higher ankle plantar flexor and knee extensor NJM than previously reported from jumping and landing. However, ankle plantar flexor and knee extensor NJM are lower in restricted squats than previous studies of jumping and landing. The high NJM in unrestricted squat exercise performed through a full range of motion suggests this squat type would be more effective to stimulate adaptations in the lower extremity musculature than restricted squats.     

“No More Mr. Nice Guy”: Preservice Teachers' Conflict With Classroom Management in a Predominantly African-American Urban Elementary School

Using methods of naturalistic inquiry, this study examines preservice teachers' conflict with classroom management strategies used in a predominantly African-American urban elementary school. It highlights the theory/practice dilemma, focusing on the tensions between the democratic strategies taught in university classes and the more authoritarian strategies actually found in the urban classrooms. The use of power and caring, evident in the interactions of the teachers with their students, was seen as a way to make sense of these strategies. The African-American and European-American researchers, both university faculty, share their differing perspectives, insights, and questions as they tried to make sense of their students' experiences, especially how subtle forms of racism and strong cultural norms impact one's teaching.     

Spotlight on the Shift to Remote Anatomical Teaching During Covid-19 Pandemic: Perspectives and Experiences from the University of Malta

Covid-19 has spread globally, affecting all nations. Preventive measures were implemented by governments including the closure of universities. The aim of this study was to evaluate the student's perspectives and experiences on the shift to remote preclinical medical education while inquiring whether there has been any psychological impact on the students. A customized questionnaire utilizing Likert-scale-based questions and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 assessment tool was distributed online to enrolled preclinical medical students at the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery at the University of Malta. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the data gathered was carried out. Multivariate logistic regression analyses was performed to establish independent variables associated with anxiety symptoms. A total of 172 responded out of a cohort of 299 preclinical students (58%). The majority perceived a positive learning experience following the shift to remote lectures, however, it was not the case for small group teaching including dissection sessions. Nonetheless students reported concerns about their education, examinations, progression to next academic year and wellbeing. Less than half the students exhibited symptoms of anxiety. Students exhibiting “moderate” worry (OR:7.6; CI 95%:1.98–29.31; P < 0.01) and “severe” worry (OR: 2.0; CI 95%: 5.0–80.5; P < 0.01) on their mental, emotional, and wellbeing due to Covid-19 were associated with anxiety symptoms after adjusting for cofounders. Apart from the short-term effects, the Covid-19 pandemic may have a long-term impact on both the medical education and the students' future careers. It is important that the implemented changes in medical education are recorded and studied since such data will be essential on how to proceed post-Covid-19 pandemic.