The role of a professional learning community in teacher change: a perspective from beliefs and practices

This longitudinal study aimed to examine the role of a professional learning community (PLC) in changing teachers’ beliefs and practices. Teachers of a Chinese department in a Hong Kong secondary school were interviewed and observed. The findings indicate that the features of a PLC-facilitating teacher change are development of a coherent structure, a collaborative culture, and effective learning activities. These help teachers to overcome initial difficulties and induce their motivation for transformation. Teacher change in five dimensions (curriculum, teaching, learning, roles of teachers, and learning to teach) and three patterns (change in practice but not in belief, change in belief but not in practice, change in practice and belief) were detected. It is argued that cultivating an effective PLC is significant to teacher development.     

The Effects of Labyrinth Walking in an Academic Library

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to determine if labyrinth walking in an academic library would reduce library user stress and promote relaxation. A non- equivalent control group design was employed. Systolic blood pressure was significant for time effect (effect size of.136, and power.721). Pulse rate was significant for time effect (effect size 0.93, and power.507). Satisfaction survey results demonstrated increased satisfaction after labyrinth walking. Data from this pilot will form the basis of a larger scale study to determine the effect of labyrinth walking on stress particularly in high-stress learning environments.     

Connections at Work: How Friendship Networks Relate to Job Satisfaction

Previous research in the association between network centrality and job satisfaction has not established a consistent relationship between the two. Considering a specific type of network and multiple measures of centrality may clarify this relationship. Thus, the current study examined the association between various types of centrality in workplace friendship networks and job satisfaction in a Korean construction company. Friendship network centrality measured as closeness was positively related to job satisfaction. However, friendship centrality measured as betweenness and degree was not related to job satisfaction. The results suggest that distinguishing among measures of centrality and network type is vital for future research.     

Social relation extraction from texts using a support-vector-machine-based dependency trigram kernel

We propose a social relation extraction system using dependency-kernel-based support vector machines (SVMs). The proposed system classifies input sentences containing two people’s names on the basis of whether they do or do not describe social relations between two people. The system then extracts relation names (i.e., social-related keywords) from sentences describing social relations. We propose new tree kernels called dependency trigram kernels for effectively implementing these processes using SVMs. Experiments showed that the proposed kernels delivered better performance than the existing dependency kernel. On the basis of the experimental evidence, we suggest that the proposed system can be used as a useful tool for automatically constructing social networks from unstructured texts.     

《三国志》重言词略说

本讨论《三国志》重言词的汉语史研究价值，举例分析了魏晋时期重言词中涌现出的新词新义。     

The Role of Gukgung in the Success of South Korean Archery

Abstract

South Korean archery has a remarkable history performed on a global stage, with the Olympic women’s archery team having won seven times consecutively. The Korea National Archery Association joined the Fédération Internationale de Tir à l’Arc (FITA) as a result of a national government policy but there are several factors that have made Korean archery successful, including active investments from Korean conglomerates, national sports promotion policy, field-oriented training and a scientific player management system, amongst other influences. Among the valuable factors, the most significant is that traditional Korean archery Gukgung instructors taught several archers in the early stages of their success. There are many similar shooting techniques in archery adopted from traditional techniques, including levelling one’s arms, releasing the string, taking one’s arm back to the rear and aiming according to the wind direction. This approach eventually became a foundation for the success of Korean archery. The Korea National Archery Association is the home of Gukgung, which advances traditional Korean archery. In this context, the Korea National Archery Association – the Mecca of traditional archery – has contributed much to the success of Korean archery.     

Inter-joint coordination between hips and trunk during downswings: Effects on the clubhead speed

Understanding of the inter-joint coordination between rotational movement of each hip and trunk in golf would provide basic knowledge regarding how the neuromuscular system organises the related joints to perform a successful swing motion. In this study, we evaluated the inter-joint coordination characteristics between rotational movement of the hips and trunk during golf downswings. Twenty-one right-handed male professional golfers were recruited for this study. Infrared cameras were installed to capture the swing motion. The axial rotation angle, angular velocity and inter-joint coordination were calculated by the Euler angle, numerical difference method and continuous relative phase, respectively. A more typical inter-joint coordination demonstrated in the leading hip/trunk than trailing hip/trunk. Three coordination characteristics of the leading hip/trunk reported a significant relationship with clubhead speed at impact (r < ?0.5) in male professional golfers. The increased rotation difference between the leading hip and trunk in the overall downswing phase as well as the faster rotation of the leading hip compared to that of the trunk in the early downswing play important roles in increasing clubhead speed. These novel inter-joint coordination strategies have the great potential to use a biomechanical guideline to improve the golf swing performance of unskilled golfers.     

Does Media Coverage of a Celebrity Suicide Trigger Copycat Suicides?: Evidence from Korean Cases

This article investigates the link between media coverage of celebrity suicides and the nation’s suicide rate. The instrumental variable regression is applied to suicide data from Statistics Korea and the media coverage data on celebrity suicides from Mediagaon of the Korea Press Foundation during the period from 1997 to 2009. The estimation results demonstrate that Korean celebrity suicides have significantly increased suicide rates, whereas non-Korean celebrity suicides have not. Moreover, greater media coverage of Korean celebrity suicides is associated with an increase in suicide rates. These findings shed light on the importance of media policy in the prevention of copycat suicides.     

Large-Scale Patterns of Entertainment Gratifications in Linguistic Content of U.S. Films

We count words in film subtitle files in an attempt to reveal morally relevant patterns of linguistic content. We argue that function words (e.g., pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions) should be positively associated with thought-provoking narrative forms. To test this hypothesis, we associate function words to aggregate measures of film viewership and appraisals. Results suggest that function words are negatively associated with measures of viewership but positively associated with appraisals. As such, our finding is consistent with the idea that function words are more likely to occur in narrative forms that audiences value more than they actually consume. We relate this finding to past research, which has shown the same pattern for hedonic versus meaningful entertainment gratifications. Discussion centers on implications for recent theorizing in this area.