The development of spoken language in deaf children: explaining the unexplained variance

Using a large existing data base on children with severe and profound deafness, 10 children were identified whose level of spoken laguage was most above and 10 whose level was most below that expected on the basis of their hearing loss, age, and intelligence. A study of their personal characteristics, family background, and educational history identified factors associated with unusually high performance; these includes earlier use of binaural ear-level aids, more highly educated mothers, auditory/verbal or auditory/oral instruction, reliance on spoken language as a method of communication, individualized instruction, integration, and structured teaching by parents. Parents of high performers also reported being highly commited to and focusing family resouces on developing their child's spoken language.     

Facing financial distress: a case study of the University of Washington

This paper describes the processes used by the University of Washington to meet severe budget reductions mandated by the State in the 1980s. A planning philosophy of smaller size and higher quality was adopted, and program elimination was identified as the only way to achieve permanent cost reductions. Program elimination occurred consensually, with faculty and student participation. While a substantial number of programs were eliminated, faith was kept with faculty by retaining all tenured professors in eliminated programs, and with students by allowing them ample time to complete degrees. The strategies the University has developed as a result of its experience of fiscal distress emphasizes increasing university autonomy. The University is striving to acquire authority over its income, is comparing itself with peer institutions to demonstrate underfunding to the legislature, and stressing to the legislature the benefits that come to the state from having a strong research institution.     

Research and Training in Higher Education: The State of the Art

The author presents a tour d'horizon of the field of higher education studies, including research on higher education, citing the relevant publication series and journals dealing with the subject, the strongest institutions, worldwide, offering university level studies in the field, and the antecedents of the endeavour. It is growing in importance as higher education institutions and systems expand, diversify, and become increasingly complex, requiring more and better insights regarding themselves for various purposes. The field needs to more fully tap findings in parallel interdisciplinary fields and to publicize the results of private institutional endeavours such as institutional research. A very glowing prognosis for higher education studies is given.     

The Public Library System as an Element in the 2007 and 2015 Electoral Programs of Spain's Political Parties in the Region of Castilla-La Mancha

To assess the relevance of the Public Library System in the political agenda, programs presented by the Political Parties competing in Regional and Local elections in the Spanish Region of Castilla-La Mancha were analyzed and the proposals about these library institutions were identified.

All Regional programs were collected and also an ample sample from the Municipalities for the 2007 and 2015 elections, trying to find the differences influenced by the impact of the financial crisis and recession on the public-library policies.

The conclusion arrived at was that, although the Public Libraries may be reasonably present in the studied programs, there is a low awareness by the Political Parties of the main problems.     

Guideline.gov: A Database of Clinical Specialty Guidelines

The National Guidelines Clearinghouse (NGC), also known as Guideline.gov, is a database of resources to assist health care providers with a central depository of guidelines for clinical specialty areas in medicine. The database is provided free of charge and is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The guidelines for treatment are updated regularly, with new guidelines replacing older guidelines every five years. There are hundreds of current guidelines with more added each week. The purpose and goal of NGC is to provide physicians, nurses, and other health care providers, insurance companies, and others in the field of health care with a unified database of the most current, detailed, relevant, and objective clinical practice guidelines.     

The Big-fish–little-pond-effect Stands Up to Critical Scrutiny: Implications for Theory, Methodology, and Future Research

The big-fish–little-pond effect (BFLPE) predicts that equally able students have lower academic self-concepts (ASCs) when attending schools where the average ability levels of classmates is high, and higher ASCs when attending schools where the school-average ability is low. BFLPE findings are remarkably robust, generalizing over a wide variety of different individual student and contextual level characteristics, settings, countries, long-term follow-ups, and research designs. Because of the importance of ASC in predicting future achievement, coursework selection, and educational attainment, the results have important implications for the way in which schools are organized (e.g., tracking, ability grouping, academically selective schools, and gifted education programs). In response to Dai and Rinn (Educ. Psychol. Rev., 2008), we summarize the theoretical model underlying the BFLPE, minimal conditions for testing the BFLPE, support for its robust generalizability, its relation to social comparison theory, and recent research extending previous implications, demonstrating that the BFLPE stands up to scrutiny. Quotations (associated page numbers) to the Dai and Rinn (2008) article are based on a prepublication version of the article available to the authors of this article that may have changed during the final preparation for publication. The authors would also like to express thanks to David Dai and Anne Rinn for their encouragement and assistance to us in preparation of our article, whilst still acknowledging that they might not agree will all the views expressed here.