Home–School Literacy Bags for Twenty-first Century Preschoolers

Combining home–school literacy bags with preschool family literature circles provided a strong foundation for family involvement at home and school during this year-long Reading Partners project, and helped parents become essential partners in their children’s literacy development. Using home–school literacy bags, children and parents learned how to combine expressive arts and emergent literacy strategies including alphabet recognition, phonemic and phonological awareness, and oral language fluency. State-of-the-art activities designed for each of the multiple intelligences met the needs of diverse students with many different learning styles and interests. As families participated in fall and spring school-based Festivals in which they shared the literacy bags in small group family literature circles, they demonstrated children’s emerging literacy skills in a relaxed, yet highly engaging atmosphere.     

Von der Lehrerausbildung in den Beruf – Fachbezogenes Wissen als Voraussetzung für Wahrnehmung,Interpretation und Handeln im Unterricht

The transition from teacher training into the teaching profession is seen to be key in the biography of a teacher. Yet there is a lack of enquiry into the development of the content knowledge (CK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) held by teachers at the end of their education, and into the significance of this knowledge for situational and behavioural cognition. On the basis of data from the international comparative study TEDS-M 2008 and the Germany-based 2012 follow-up, this contribution investigates the knowledge and skills development of teachers during the transition from teacher training to the teaching profession in a four-year longitudinal study with n = 171 mathematics teachers. Three test formats (paper-and-pencil, video-vignettes and speed tests) are used to examine various indicators for teacher expertise. In addition to the analysis of changes in mathematical CK and PCK levels, path analysis is used to determine the extent to which this knowledge functions as a predictor for the perception and interpretation of classroom situations, the decision-making in these situations, and the quick identification of student mistakes. The results show only small changes in the group mean (for MCK there is a small loss, whereas MPCK remains constant), but high fluctuation (i. e. weak correlation) in the MPCK ranking between the two measurement occasions, pointing to differential learning effects gained from teaching practice. There are also significant differences in predictability: MCK is important for the speed indicators of teacher expertise; MCK and MPCK for the perception and interpretation of situations, and for the generation of action strategies. These findings can on the one hand help to facilitate the evaluation of beginning teachers’ need for support and, on the other hand, they indicate the necessity for the early integration of practice-based elements into teacher training programmes with the aim of developing PCK and related skills.     

Midsession reversals with pigeons: visual versus spatial discriminations and the intertrial interval

Discrimination reversal learning has been used as a measure of species flexibility in dealing with changes in reinforcement contingency. In the simultaneous-discrimination, midsession-reversal task, one stimulus (S1) is correct for the first half of the session, and the other stimulus (S2) is correct for the second half. After training, pigeons show a curious pattern of choices: They begin to respond to S2 well before the reversal point (i.e., they make anticipatory errors), and they continue to respond to S1 well after the reversal (i.e., they make perseverative errors). That is, pigeons appear to be using the passage of time or the number of trials into the session as a cue to reverse, and are less sensitive to the feedback at the point of reversal. To determine whether the nature of the discrimination or a failure of memory for the stimulus chosen on the preceding trial contributed to the pigeons’ less-than-optimal performance, we manipulated the nature of the discrimination (spatial or visual) and the duration of the intertrial interval (5.0 or 1.5 s), in order to determine the conditions under which pigeons would show efficient reversal learning. The major finding was that only when the discrimination was spatial and the intertrial interval was short did the pigeons perform optimally.     

Convergence,connectivity, ephemeral and performed: new characteristics of digital photographs

The recent convergence of digital cameras into mobile phones with Internet connectivity has provided the opportunity for individuals and organisations to adopt new image-making practices. The widespread use of photo-sharing and social networking platforms for sharing, accessing and storing digital photographs is presenting scholars in the social sciences with new areas of research that address the nature of digital photography. By examining the technological, social and cultural factors involved in contemporary image-making practices, scholars are presenting new concepts regarding the characteristics of digital photographs that impact archival activities aimed at managing and preserving trustworthy digital records. This article identifies and discusses the key concepts emerging from social science research on digital photography that are most relevant to the archival field. Analysis of the findings of these studies suggests that new technologies and social practices are changing how people use digital photographs and their expectations of permanence. Therefore, archivists need to be engaged in interdisciplinary discussions regarding the evolution of photographic practices and emerging characteristics of digital photographs in order to anticipate the management and preservation activities required to protect contemporary visual records for future use.     

Use and Perceptions of E-books by Academic Staff in Further Education

This article reports on a study of the awareness, perceptions and use of e-books by academic staff in Further Education (FE) colleges throughout Northern Ireland (NI). It is the first comprehensive study of e-book use by FE faculty in NI and fills a significant gap in the research literature on e-books in education, which has tended to focus on Higher Education and the university setting. Data was collected through an online survey which was distributed to FE faculty across NI. The findings show that although FE academic staff are receptive to e-books and welcome them as a resource, poor reading experience and lack of awareness of relevant titles have had an impact. In particular, the research found that 40% of academic staff, in post less than five years, had not used e-books. Greater availability of titles, promotion, and better integration within teaching and learning emerge as key requisites for effective service delivery and enhancement of e-books within FE, as does the need for better targeted instruction and training aimed at academic staff. Understanding patrons' views, awareness, needs, habits and expectations in relation to e-books is crucial to help direct collection content while budgets remain tight and physical space limited.     

西方国家体育场馆资产并购控制的分析及启示

运用经济学的理论和研究方法,对西方国家体育场馆在资产并购过程中的申报制度和并购前期的深入调查方法,以及部分国家在工作中存在的问题和采取制定并购指南的对策方法等进行了分析.研究表明,我国的体育场馆管理改革必须借鉴西方国家的成功经验,建立符合中国管理体制的并购指南,结合当前社会发展的实际情况,确定合适的经济目标和社会有效竞争标准,寻求公共机制与市场机制的有机结合,探索出符合中国特色的场馆管理新道路.     

Electronic commerce and free speech

For commercial purveyors of digital speech, information and entertainment, the biggest threat posed by the Internet isn't the threat of piracy, but the threat posed by free speech -- speech that doesn't cost any money. Free speech has the potential to squeeze out expensive speech. A glut of high quality free stuff has the potential to run companies in the business of selling speech out of business. We haven't had to worry about this before, because speaking in a meaningful way to a large audience was expensive, and people couldn't afford to do serious mass speaking for free for very long. The Internet has made it much cheaper. It doesn't take much to give out information to the whole world, every day, for free, for years. And people do. If we are trying to increase the abundant dissemination of information, free speech is good. If we are trying to increase commerce in information, free speech is arguably bad, in that it competes with pay speech. Information merchants would obviously prefer that the only speech in the marketplace be pay speech. In the past two years, commercial content owners have scored significant progress in herding free speakers off the Net. There's an important synergy between persuading the government to give your industry some friendly new laws or regulations, and using new and old legal tools to make life more difficult or expensive for inconvenient competitors who aren't necessarily doing anything illegal. Recently, businesses have been able to combine the two strategies to make the Internet a much safer place to sell speech, by making the Internet a less friendly, more dangerous place to give away speech for free.