Sarah Bernhardt's first “farewell” tour, 1905‐06: Little rock,arkansas welcomes Camille

Between 1800 and 1918, Sarah Bernhardt toured America nine times. Although she received critical praise and large profits from extended runs in cities, she often performed in smaller towns between cities to help defray the expenses of touring. Bernhardt's performance of Camille in Little Rock, Arkansas on March 6, 1906 was hailed as “the greatest dramatic event in the history of Little Rock.” This study details the events of Bernhardt's visit, discussing its impact on the social and cultural life of the city.     

The function of mundane ritualizing in adult friendship and marriage

Rituals serve important functions in both friendships and married relationships. This study served, to investigate the categorical structures of rituals in both of these relationship types. In married relationships, seven categories of ritual functions emerged including: Relational Masonry, Relational Maintenance, Life Management, Fun/Enjoyment, Togetherness, Talk‐Time, and Anti‐Ritual. In friendships, seven categories of ritual functions also emerged including: Personal & Relational Stimulation, Personal Improvement, Relational‐Affirmation, Support, Self‐Affirmation, Escape, and Anti‐Ritual.     

Data Rules: How Mapping Technology Drives Better Customer Service

Is your library market-driven, product-driven or customer-driven? New internet-based data and tools are now available for public libraries that enable you to be customer-driven—for your own unique service area. This article shows how three library systems are using these tools—focused on market segmentation data and geographic information system (GIS) technology—to deliver more relevant customer services. Each solution described in the article was developed in close collaboration between CIVICTechnologies and the library, involving research to understand the library's objectives and desired outcomes, and using the data needed to meet each library's unique challenge.     

Mastering cognitive development theory in computer science education

To design an effective computer science curriculum, educators require a systematic method of classifying the difficulty level of learning activities and assessment tasks. This is important for curriculum design and implementation and for communication between educators. Different educators must be able to use the method consistently, so that classified activities and assessments are comparable across the subjects of a degree, and, ideally, comparable across institutions. One widespread approach to supporting this is to write learning objects in terms of Bloom’s Taxonomy. This, or other such classifications, is likely to be more effective if educators can use them consistently, in the way experts would use them. To this end, we present the design and evaluation of our online interactive web-based tutorial system, which can be configured and used to offer training in different classification schemes. We report on results from three evaluations. First, 17 computer science educators complete a tutorial on using Bloom’s Taxonomy to classify programming examination questions. Second, 20 computer science educators complete a Neo-Piagetian tutorial. Third evaluation was a comparison of inter-rater reliability scores of computer science educators classifying programming questions using Bloom’s Taxonomy, before and after taking our tutorial. Based on the results from these evaluations, we discuss the effectiveness of our tutorial system design for teaching computer science educators how to systematically and consistently classify programming examination questions. We also discuss the suitability of Bloom’s Taxonomy and Neo-Piagetian theory for achieving this goal. The Bloom’s and Neo-Piagetian tutorials are made available as a community resource. The contributions of this paper are the following: the tutorial system for learning classification schemes for the purpose of coding the difficulty of computing learning materials; its evaluation; new insights into the consistency that computing educators can achieve using Bloom; and first insights into the use of Neo-Piagetian theory by a group of classifiers.     

Teachers engaging in action research: challenging some assumptions

A number of recent professional development projects in Australia have expected teachers to engage in action research as a process for professional learning and educational reform. This study investigated the experiences of ten teachers from one school who spent a year undertaking action research projects as part of the Innovative Links Project. The author was a participant observer in the study in her role as the school's ‘academic associate’ for the project. In this article, the project's expectations of the teachers are examined to reveal the extent to which they were based on realistic assumptions about the conditions within which the teachers worked as they tried to achieve them.     

Knowledge translation and research careers: Mode I and Mode II activity among health researchers

Defining knowledge translation activities using Gibbons and Nowotny's Mode I and II forms of knowledge production, health researcher (N = 240) characteristics are compared with their knowledge translation activities. Applied researchers (n = 168) engaged in more Mode II activity (p < .001), perceived their work as having more impact (p < .001), and reported higher levels of relational capital (p < .001) when compared to basic researchers (n = 72). Those from medical schools (n = 128) had more publications (p = .004) as did applied researchers in medical school compared to applied researchers from other faculties (p = .001). These findings provide early empirical insights into emerging tensions in environments where Mode I and Mode II activities co-exist; tensions that may extract unintended costs from researchers. Such costs may be paid in the currency not only of tenure and promotion, but also of successful grant and career scientist award acquisition.     

An Exploratory Study of Teachers' Beliefs Regarding the Implementation of Constructivism in Their Classrooms

Journal of Science Teacher Education -     

Developing the Librarians' Role in Supporting Grant Applications and Reducing Waste in Research: Outcomes From a Literature Review and Survey in the NIHR Research Design Service

ABSTRACT

Librarians and information specialists' involvement during the development of grant applications for external funding can save researchers' time, provide specialist support, and contribute to reducing avoidable waste in research. This article presents a survey of information specialists working for the National Institute for Health Research's Research Design Service within English applied health services research and a scoping review to identify other examples of librarians supporting grant applications. The survey found that support included: verifying proposed research has not already been performed; searching literature to provide background for the project; and advising on or writing systematic review methods. The scoping review found three examples where librarians were involved: in writing sections of the application; conducting reviews, and becoming a co-applicant. We recommend librarians engage with researchers by checking whether search requests are to support an application and by becoming familiar with resources and techniques to support grant proposal development.